Sanguine, My Brother
by Soul of Ashes
Summary: A certain white haired devil hunter gets thrust into a world not his own, and discovers vampires, demons, and dreamscapes. The cocky selfassured teenager gets more than just a bad night's sleep in this humor drama set in London, England. Much VxD, ok.
1. Chapter 1

**TITLE: Sanguine, My Brother**

_This must be someone else's dream._

This thought pervaded firmly, like a parade of elephants, crowding inside his skull. His Last Domain, his great coffin, seemed so far away from his mind. He knew that is where his body slept, but of what did his vampiric mind dream? He always dreamed. He always remembered.

But he had not been to this place before. It was a city burdened by the weight of monsters. Demons pillaged and raped everywhere among ruined shells of buildings, copulating with wild, passionate abandon with anything they can find, devouring humans and each other in their race to gain power. It was a disgusting dream. Vampires rarely did dream about anything specific, but almost always recollected their worst (or perhaps best) memories in their day sleep. He did not remember this place at all. So, he realized, this must be someone else's dream.

Bemused, he waited for his status as just a floating observer to change, or night to fall, or for something monumentous to gain his attention. He noticed nothing above the usual activity for awhile. The black shackles of sleep began to loosen, and the vision darken. Light trickled in, and he firmly rooted himself back into the room, staring, forcing his field of sight to expand and include that little flicker. A gateway? A door was opening on the rooftop of a tall, immeasurably wide building. But there were no walls, and no door. Just an enormous glistening rectangle of white; so white that he felt his dream-eyes aching. A figure garbed in red was passing through it. Then the rectangle slammed shut, swallowing the figure, leaving Alucard extraordinarily breathless.

The dream faltered, jarred from the vision, and then the ordinary things began to filter in. He lost the control he had in that bizarre vision, and let the familiar memories of his past wash over him.

-----------

_This must be somebody else's dream._

His boots clicking on cobbled London streets, he gave a cursory look around himself at the clean shop windows and well-dressed individuals in business suits and citizens in street clothes. Just as he stared at them, they stared back. He was not exactly dressed for this kinda weather, bein' cold and all. It was freezing as hell and he could see his breath, and he was not exactly dressed for layers. What's more, that tell-tale tickle at the back of his neck that bothered him at all times was gone. That meant no demons. And no demons meant he _had_ to be dreaming. There would _always_ be demons; if there weren't, just what the hell was he good for? How was he gonna make a living? What was he going to do?

This had to be a dream. Yep, couldn't be no other way.

The longer he walked, the more streets he saw. And in every street he kept getting weird looks. Eventually he had to cross his arms over his chest, then button his jacket to keep his skin from turning red from chill. He gave a little nod at a driver before he jogged across the street, his unusual white hair spiking slightly. Jeez, these people acted like they had never seen a sword before!

There was a magazine stand waiting there. He picked up a paper, staring at the cover. He read the words quietly to himself. The paper for was a city called London, and he realized that everywhere around him people's words sounded strange, clipped, and almost musical. Dropping the paper back onto the stack with its brothers, he wandered to the corner, and stood there, staring up at the clear blue sky, his blue eyes catching the light of an alien sun.

_What the hell? I just stepped through that door. I didn't realize it would take me somewhere else. _

_SHIT! It was a trap! I can't go back now, I can't go back and fight demons, or save anyone... Shit!!_

"Uh, excuse me? Watch your language, if you please, sir!" The magazine seller looked at him, disgruntled. He was a pot-bellied fellow who wore a deep blue jacket, jeans, and a pair of thick glasses.

The devil hunter Dante looked up, realizing he had exploded in curses right there on the street. A little girl in a school uniform blinked up at him, her disgruntled mother holding hands over her ears. "What'd he say, mama? Mister, you have a cool sword!"

"Yeah," he replied, rubbing the back of his head. "Real smashin', kid."

"Can I have it?" the girl stepped up onto the curb, much to her mother's great fluster.

Dante looked down at her, indecision and embarassment coloring his cheeks pink. "Uh."

"Can I? Please?"

"Serena, come on now!" The mother, whose dark hair and large, intelligent eyes, seized her daughter by her jacket, pulling her back into the safe circle of her presence. "You there, d-don't come any closer!"

"But mama--"

"Lady, you can relax." Dante frowned at her. "I ain't no sicko. I'm just new here."

"Sword," the girl whimpered, stretching her hand out. She grabbed his jacket and pulled on it. Dante gently detangled her mittens from his jacket buckle.

"Uh. Er, c'mon now, cut it out, hey? I gotta wear this."

"SWORD!!" she squealed, wriggling against her mother's tenacious hold.

"Oh, for heaven's sake!" the woman cried, releasing her daughter. "Please don't let her hurt herself!"

Dante grinned, and slid his sword down so she could touch the handle. It was a heavy, lethal looking weapon, a work of art as well as warfare. He didn't really think much about that kind of stuff, so he was kind of flattered when people offered to look at his sword, and appreciate it. "You done, kiddo?"

"Yeah. It's real cool!"

The smug-looking half-devil gave his unbidden accomplice a little grin, tousling her hair before he straightened. "You should listen to your mom and do what she tells ya, alright?"

"Okay." With a cuteness that only children possessed, she sidled back up to her mother's side, took her hand, and together they crossed the street. The woman looked over her shoulder more than once, and quite possibly scolding her daughter with promises of punishment and nights without dinner.

Dante wrinkled his nose and grinned. And then he chuckled. "Well, well. This place is fulla ordinary, boring people. What a drag." He crossed the other street, into an unsettling darkness. His cash was exchanged for the currency in question in a building that smelled too clean and whose employees were youngish homely women with bobbed haircuts and clean, fair skin. The sun was setting when he bought himself the only place he knew would take him in. It was a seedy little place that must have doubled for a brothel. In the tiny room with a sink on one wall, he stared at the bed, then took the pillow, fluffed it up, and took up a spot on the brown, questionably stained carpet.

-----------

Walter C. Dornez perused the paperwork that Integra had left behind while she retired to stave off a growing migraine. It was freezing outside, promising snow if the weather provided. Muted, late autumn light caroused through the tall, colorful windows; the freshly wiped tables glowed. A report fell on top of the stack suddenly, and his monocle flashed in irritation before he noticed that it was one of Hellsing's agents, red-cheeked from the unforgiving England cold. "This just in from the commissioner for Sir Hellsing."

"Another red-light district case?" he sighed, giving the yellow paper a cursory glance over. The movement of vampires in groups was something to contend with. Usually, greater supernatural beings were involved; smaller operations almost always tried to conceal themselves under the guise of some sort of sexual trade or ordinary crime syndicates.

He left the quiet, church stillness of the library with its stained glass windows to pick his way to the gym. The echoes of metal striking metal guided him to the master of the estate. He entered the gym, whose waxed floors were covered with blue mats to protect the handiwork, to the sight of Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing fencing saber-to-saber with a familiar instructor. She wore snug but comfortable fencing wear, her hair bunched up away from her face into a mask. Her fencing instructor was an old friend of the Hellsing family, and while they danced with swords of death, Walter waited patiently with the report in hand. Her body moved fluidly and impossibly, striking and feinting, her skill unparalleled in a single human woman.

When she was through, the male bowed and tugged off his mask. He was a handsome fellow, but through personal experience was notorious for gallivanting the red light district hunting for gentlemen of ill breeding. Walter gave him a cursory nod before he addressed Sir Integra.

"Another report, sir, from Soho."

"Right here in London?" The woman's face twisted into a scowl. She tugged her mask from her face and shook her hair out. She eyeballed the report swiftly, before finding the interesting bits and took her time. Walter stood by, thinking perhaps where Alucard might be so no one need repeat the information found in the report. However, it was more of a way to prepare himself should he want to avoid the vampire at all costs.

He'd been acting fairly odd lately. It was as if he hadn't quite been sleeping well - but that was ridiculous in its own right.

"Walter, fetch Alucard. I'm sure this will just be a matter of cleaning house." Integra's smile was not a kind one. Often Walter wondered whether she caught whatever madness possessed the fickle count; the slaying of vampires was serious business, but it was like a game they played each night that a quarry dashed across Integra's desk.

"Yes, sir." He turned, bowing appropriately, trying to mask the displeasure of waking the unusually lethargic nosferatu.

-------------

Dante had a feeling something was up. Long before he ever shut his eyes, he could feel his skin crawling as if unwanted hands were touching him, cold lips whispering in his ear. It was kind of gross; he liked his ladies warm. When he opened his eyes again, the touches on his skin were hardly imaginary. Their eyes and their faces reminded him of the unwanted attentions of a certain lady... Nevan.

Metal clicked noisily in the muffled space. The ratcheting reload was unmistakable; the women were no stranger to it. Their unresponsive prey swung himself up off the floor and leveled his guns at their pretty faces. "Oho. Twins. But," he grinned, "I think you ladies are in the wrong room. The dressing room's down the hall on the left." He jerked his chin to the door; the creatures - whatever they were (probably vampires, or succubi, whatever) - hissed, their repulsive mouths widening to reveal teeth full of fangs (okay, so they were vampires), leaping for his throat.

With unfaltering speed, he opened fire on his sneaky bed partners without much in the way of hesitation; monsters were monsters, no matter who they were. It was only a matter of whether or not they had any legitimate reason that could otherwise be worked out by, y'know, talking about it.

However, this art of "negotation" was much more physically demanding. Not to mention fun as hell.

The room became a veritable shooting gallery; the vampiresses were fast but there was nowhere they could possibly run, except maybe leave the room. From outside, his window must have looked like as if a strobe light was going off to onlookers were it not for the tell-tale reports of gunfire. The vampiresses screamed their last in their own blood, melting into the floor.

"Tch. All talk." He blew smoke from his guns. "Heh. This place is starting to get interesting fast." With no further commentary, he kicked open his door, arms held out, one barrel down one hallway and the other sighting a figure down at the other. There were not many other people awake at this time of night; the moon was still high, the cold air blowing through the open window in his bedroom, chill on the backs of his legs.

"I don't know who you are," the figure down the hall said, his accent potently native to some Germanic country. "But you will be dead soon, herr gunslinger."

"I wouldn't make a wager on that one, pops. I just wasted your little girls; pretty low if you think a few chicks are gonna get under my skin." Dante cracked his neck, shoulders rolling under his jacket, popping tendons and joints.

"Perhaps you're right. But a few 'chicks' can accomplish much if executed under the right circumstances." The man turned; his eyes were red, and the pulsating power of a vampire rose to claim the room. He wore an antique Third Reich jacket with the swastika band still stitched into it, and his blonde hair was combed back from his face. "You are not like any human I've ever met. You will taste most divine, I think." Laughter thick with the syrupy bloodlust of the undead floated down the corridor toward him.

And then the Nazi vampire was right in his face. Dante kicked out with his leg, knocking him back, bullets raining from the heated muzzles of Ebony and Ivory. On a sidenote, Dante noticed that there was not a sound other than the noises of battle. It was as if no one even stayed here. _Just my luck; I walk into the sex parlor of a fucked up vampire Nazi named Hans What's-His-Face, and get--_

His cry of pain surprised even him. The vampire was wielding some sort of dual blades, daggers that had just recently cut into him. Using a sword in this small of a space was stupid, unless he planned on tearing the place apart. Oh well; not the first time. The steel felt good in his hands again. With a whoop of sadistic, childish joy, he slashed off a section of wall that crumbled like dust; the vampire's arm flew off, the blade landing with a 'thukk' in a door. It was almost surreal; the vampire howled with pain. "Impossible! You can't possibly be this powerful!"

The half-devil flicked blood off his sword, shouldering it like a baseball bat. "Yeah, I know. I get that a lot; you ready to die now or what?"

The vampire swore at him in German; it sounded less impressive than Dante would have hoped. It was like listening to a guy try to puke and clear his nasal passages at the same time. He rolled his eyes, before taking a blurring lunge forward to remove his head. But before he could arrive, he saw a white hand appear out of nowhere, exploding through the nazi vampire's chest in a spray of bright, crimson blood. Boots scraped carpet, and Dante could only watch as a figure dressed in a crimson Victorian trenchcoat and smoldering red eyes returned his gaze with unmatched hostility.

The stranger seemed bemused; his lips twisted into a maniacal smile that set Dante's nerves ablaze. He was immediately annoyed. "Alright. That was MY vampire, for one thing. You cramp everyone's style like that, pal?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," the stranger sighed, his wide red fedora hiding his eyes. His hair was purest black, and a bit mangy in Dante's honest opinion (though what else could he say about his OWN hair?). Something familiar about the guy's voice set Dante off.

"Hey, you're kind of... familiar." He cocked his head. "Haven't I seen that hat before on some kid's cartoon show or somethin'?"

"I dreamed about you," the stranger said, raising his hand to his lips, and chuckling as Dante watched him nonchalantly lick blood from his fingers. "Though you were much more attractive in that dream."

With a slight saunter, the halfdevil stepped back. "Slow down, cowboy. Tell me your name."

"Alucard. Now... dream-boy. Look behind you."

Dante shook his head, tipping his head to one side. He noted with some disdain with his peripheral vision that the doors of every room had opened, and masses of undead were emerging. "Well, well. We got a party started. What to do?"

"How about you go home, and let me deal with these filth?"

"Uh, no?" Dante turned, sneering at his enemy. "They woke me up out of a sound sleep, groped me in ways I don't wanna be groped, I'm tired and cranky and I wanna knock some heads. You just wait your fucking turn."

The nosferatu grinned a scythe-like smile full of pointed teeth. "Try to stop me... if you can."

And it was on. Dante traded his sword back in for his trusty pistols, spinning them expertly in his deft, calloused hands before ducking in a crouch to fill the bodies of the undead with bullets. To his shock, the crazy bastard in the hat had a set of guns quite like his own, only Dante's were decidedly cooler in his honest opinion. They blazed a bloody path through legions of undead (well, it was a hallway so really, they cleared them out in seconds. When it was over, their guns were hardly smoking before turning them on each other.

In less than a minute, Dante flew out the second story window and landed in the street, his jacket riddled with bullet holes. He stood up, wiping blood from his face, ignoring the group of uniformed soldiers ranging around the building.

His opponent smugly floated down from the very same window, reloading his weapons. "Are you finished?"

Blood spattered from bulletholes littering his body. His jeans were stained an oxblood red, darker red than his jacket. On the snow, the bright droplets steamed in the frigid air. Alucard seemed absolutely unharmed; Dante licked his thumb, grinning ear-to-ear. "My name is Dante."

"I know, Dante." Alucard smirked, his obscene tongue slurping the blood from the muzzle of his gun. His weapons were steaming. "Aren't you the least bit curious about what happened in my dream?"

"Nope."

"We're still dreaming, you know." Alucard looked around. Then he raised his weapon and shot one of the uniformed gentleman between the eyes. Their was a gout of blood and a groan, and the man fell to the ground dead. "I couldn't have done that, you see, if this was reality."

"What the he--" Dante stared, blinking. "What do you suppose we do?"

The vampire crossed his arms over his chest, his guns disappearing under his trenchcoat. "I suppose I must wake myself. I have been dreaming for many hours into the night now. Walter and Integra must be beside themselves trying to rouse me."

Dante realized that his bleeding had slowed. He was not really weakened in the least bit, and with a sigh, he sat down. The rest of the uniformed men seemed frozen statues, unmoving and totally unresponsive to the death of their fallen comrade. Dante, on a whim, walked over to one of the frozen men and, with a slight smirk, pushed one of them over. He fell like a cardboard cut-out. "Heh."

"Stop fooling around!" Alucard snapped. "I must wake from this...strange dream. One of us here does not exist, and it sure as hell isn't me."

"But how can you be sure?" Dante turned, clicking his tongue. "This could be MY dream. I walked in through a gate and found myself in this place called London. How can I be sure this isn't reality either?"

"I would have killed you by now." Alucard's wicked smile firmly pasted itself on his lips.

"Yeah, yeah, and I'm frickin' Father Christmas. Don't let this cool red jacket fool you." He laughed coarsely, looking up at the sky. The snow, everything here, felt real enough to him. But to this guy... just what the hell was going on?

"You exist only in my mind," the vampire said, approaching the white-haired youth without even so much as leaving a single footprint in the virgin snow. He touched the sword on his back. "Only a figment of an immortal mind gone stagnant with an existence that fails to sustain its own meaning. Perhaps if I killed you, I would finally go entirely mad, awaken and kill everything, including myself... or simply sleep on forever, in a cyclic horror story, unending for eternity."

Dante blinked. "Dude, are you seriously morbid?"

Alucard shrugged. "Maybe."

"Guess we can fight more or... just sit down and wait. I'm sure something will happen sooner or later." And with that, the half-devil squatted down on the edge of a car, seating himself there firmly while rubbing his arms for warmth. Well, it was worth a shot, anyway. Alucard walked over and sat down beside him, and for a long time he said nothing at all, perplexed and almost amused. It started snowing again within the minute, a blitzkrieg of white flurries that tickled the half-demon's nose.

Dante sneezed.

"Here." Alucard put his hat on top of his head. "Enjoying the weather?"

"No; I think my nuts just fell off but I could be wrong." Dante blinked a little, a bit confused as to why he was suddenly chummy with a guy who could shank him with his bare friggin' hands. "I envy you. Probably can't even feel the cold, can you?"

"Nope." Alucard grinned, his wild mane of black hair falling short of maniacally whimsical as he brushed his hand over the hood of the car, then proceeded write with his finger on the windshield _Wine is fine but blood tastes better._

**Author's Notes:** WELL. So many of you (well, wait, only three people) want me to continue this travesty. I know it's hard to believe, but it's really hard for me to make stupid with two characters I absolutely love. Maybe this can be funny AND serious at the same time. Huhhh, well, this is tres difficile as you can imagine.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's notes:** Okay. Here it is, another chapter of somewhat crackaliciousness. Sorry, Vergil seems to want more seriousness than this fic deserves. So, here we are.

CHAPTER 2

In London, the streets crackled with subzero temperatures. But no one could surmise from the stratified scorch-marks on the ground that moments ago, London had been exposed to a gate to another world. It was a world of scorching, purifying flames, of monsters unimaginable. It was the realm of demons.

A man in a long blue jacket stamped his shoes a little in the snow; the park was absolutely silent, each sound muffled and eerie, the trees bowed under the weight of freshly fallen snow, the lakes and rivers bubbling no more. It had to have been a pleasant change from the screaming wails and moans of those who inhabited Hell. The pond's ice-covered surface had been broken, due to a body having come flying from the gate to Hell and smashing through hardened snow, then colliding with the solid ice of the pond. Unfortunately, the surface was now broken into many pieces, and the body underneath continuously thrashed and spluttered.

The white-haired figure stood and watched this display with chillingly unconcerned eyes before he turned away and headed off along a snow-laden path.

A waterlogged voice cried out, "Vergil! Don't let me drown! I can't swim!! Please--" The voice was decidedly feminine; it was desperate, choked with water, and shrill with terror.

The figure paused, answering to the name of Vergil. "Your usefulness has ended. I only required you to escape from Hell."

His response was even more violent thrashing, and then... it began to grow dreadfully quiet. The girl from before disappeared under the water; the last to disappear was one arm, swaddled in black leather. This stranger was going to die without ever having a name, without having a face, and without so much a single solitary glance of worry from the man who was called Vergil. She was still fighting, still struggling to survive; not for herself, but to regain her tenuous position at his side.

Before the last knuckle of her longest finger could disappear, Vergil shoved his sword sheath into the frigid waters, poised at the edge while grasping elusive wet, cold white. The black gloved hand stirred and flailed and finally all four fingers and a thumb seized the lifeline with a tenacity that belied the lethargic movements of the rest of her body. With seemingly no great effort, the man Vergil pulled her in, grabbed her by the elbow, and flung her haphazardly into the snow. She was blue in the face, her long hair pulled back in an Asian-style knot that was slowly coming undone. She had a face like a pixie, but her eyes were wide with cold shock, her body steaming, as it had still been burning hot from the atmosphere of the demon realm. Her clothes would do her no good here.

Unbashfully, Vergil turned her over onto her back and methodically took off her soaking wet clothes. Had she been anything more than a quarter demon, she would have been fine, but she could have drowned, which meant she could still damn near perish from hypothermia. The little naked quarter-demoness clung onto him, all sharp elbows and knees. He pried her frozen fingers off his sleeve every time. When her clothes were all stuck together in a freezing pile, she huddled with her nude behind in the snow.

She could not even hope to speak. Vergil threw his coat over her and pushed her down, wrapping her in it like a shivering, frozen tortilla stuffed with humanoid. In a moment, his body was also smothering hers, which forced his eyes to be hovering only inches from her own terrified orange ones. He looked as if he would bite off her nose if she so much as twitched funny.

Minutes ticked by. This stranger, clad in only a black shirt and pants with boots that were dusted with white flakes of frozen water, was laying on top of someone he was going to let die. Why had he changed his mind? Surely he could not have felt an ounce of pity for this pathetic creature, who could not hope to be as powerful as a half-demon like himself, nevermind obtain the power of full-blooded demons like the ones Vergil had fought in Hell during their daring escape.

When she was warm enough to blush, he stood up, dusted his hands off, and glared at her dispassionately with little more regard than he would reserve for an insect. "Get up. You've wasted too much of my time already."

"I-I..." The girl's eyes widened; they were a brilliant shade of orange. She had olive skin and a pear-shaped form, though her soft curves did not in the least suggest she was weak in physical strength. "Thank you... Master Vergil!" The young woman flung herself to her feet, crushing herself against his body while saving them both another dip into the pond. "Thank you so much! You really do care about me!"

He flinched, as if her touch gave him a shock of physical discomfort. He detached her from him, and hooked the sheath of his sword back where it belonged by his side. "Enough. Get your clothes. We'll have to find a place to stay. You're not walking around like... _that_... and I want my coat back."

The girl's expression could only be described then as blissfully happy, as if she could not remember that he would have let her drown and freeze to death ages ago. She was still flush with embarassment, the jacket falling open. She tucked it around her, slipping her arms into sleeves that were far too long for her. Despite being barefoot, she picked up her sopping wet clothes and hurried after him. He had no patience to wait for her. She waved her arms, crying out to him, "Wait! Vergil, sir, wait for me!"

* * *

Both hands slammed onto her desk. Integra snapped at Walter, "What do you mean he's not waking up?!"

"I've tried everything other than physically injuring him to make him rise, sir. He seems to be in a kind of torpor and he... absolutely will not come out of it." Walter's genuine concern showed on his face; every line etched was creased with emotion, which normally would not show. This was not just a Walter concern, either. This was a concern for all of England,Queen and Crown. "And I know he's not pretending. If he was, he wouldn't be able to help himself and snicker and wake up or... something. But this was an order from you. Just saying your name would be able to rouse him, surely."

Integra's concern was sandblasted away by anger and outrage. "I will see this myself."

It was just a few minute's walk. But Integra was almost running in her haste to see what had stricken her vampire with this strange lethargy. Walter was hot on her heels. They spoke not a word to anyone the reason of their haste. When they descended into the unlit blackness of Alucard's usual haunt, the coffin lid was closed the way Walter had left it. It was difficult for just one person to crack it open even a hair. Integra approached the quiet, unmoving coffin, the count's Last Domain. She felt none of the usual disquiet, the temperament of the atmosphere as quiet as it would be for the day.

"Alucard, rise!"

The coffin did not move. Her eyebrow twitched. Then she cocked back her leg, and sent a resounding kick to the coffin. "Alucard, I command you to rise!"

"S-Sir," Walter murmured quietly, bowing his head. "Perhaps we should alert someone to this situation."

"No! There has to be some way to wake him. We can't do anything for sure. But we have to do something about the vampire in Soho." Integra pushed her spectacles up her nose, anxiety causing her to motion franticly for Walter. He quickly administered a small cigar for her, lit it, and watched her take in the wondrous nicotine to soothe her nerves. "That's it. I will go there myself. Walter, assign our best men to this team I will command. You stay here and help monitor Alucard and see if there are any changes, anything at all."

With a clack of her heel, she pivoted for the door and hurried out, crying out orders before she even closed the door behind her. Walter sighed, took a long look at the coffin, before he followed her out of the basement, shoes clacking stiffly in the ungodly silence.

* * *

This world was not his own; it felt like he had walked into someone else's dream. Everything from the snow to the surreal gleam of televisions and lights on the pristine whiteness and even to the small figures asleep in their beds sent his mind into a kind of wreckage. He could see people up late, watching television, hardly showing concern for demon invasion, as if their lives were slow and monotonous and easy. It was disgusting. He couldn't stand seeing them, asleep, peaceful, so absolutely ignorant. He wanted to rattle their world of bland numbness, paint their front doors red with blood, show them that demons existed and were very much worthy of attention.

The quarter-demoness he met in Hell was called Vivian, who then helped him navigate some of the rougher regions (being a permenant denizen herself for some years already). She claimed to be the descendant of the demon Asmodeus who ruled over one quarter of Hell itself and commanded at least eighty of his own minions. Somehow Vergil found that unlikely until she explained that her mother was a half-demon spawn of Asmodeus, and that she was the daughter of THAT person. Her power could not possibly compare to Vergil's. Why did he even bother keeping her around then?

Maybe, during the course of watching her slowly drown, he had weighed her usefulness against the difficulties ahead, and decided that an extra pair of hands and a cute face could get him places where the Yamato, his favorite weapon (and trusty negotiator), proved unsatisfactory.

Some dens of iniquity were still active, even this late at night. Vergil stood before the building of a hotel that seemed to be alive with sexual activity. With a wrinkled nose, he walked up to the front door, where he was sequestered by a tough, burly looking man with a lazy eye.

"Hold ye fast, there." He spoke with a funny accent. It grated on his nerves. "If ye dinnae have the cash, ye cannae enter. Apologies, lad, but this is a pay-oop-front ooperation, if ye know wha' Ah mean!"

Vergil moved his hand to the Yamato. "My apologies. I must have been mistaken." He did not sound even remotely repentant.

Then the burly brute's eyes caught a glimpse of the naked skin beneath the Vivian's blue jacket. His eyes grew wide and stupid, before he looked back, locking eyes firmly with the bizarrely slitted pupils of Vergil's own cold ones. "Ah see. Well, then, this ain't no weather to be oot and aboot in,dressed like tha' there lass! Getcher inside, c'mon then!" He grabbed Vergil and hauled him inside; in contrast, he gently lifted the girl onto the step, nudging her in after him. "Go and have words wi' Marcellus. He'll set you oop right, har, har har!"

It was warm in here, stank of marijuana, drugs, sex, and very faintly of blood. Whoever Marcellus could be, he was waiting for them further in the lobby amidst a pile of flesh and earthly pleasures. Vergil kept a firm hold on Vivian's sleeve as he placed himself in the lion's den. A circle of sofas surrounded him, piled with sleepy human bodies. Incense was burning, the stained carpet stank of felines and old fluids, and any number of black candles were sweating along the walls and on coffee tables with glass tops sporting unfinished lines of white powder.

Marcellus was a pale-skinned man in a uniform that was pulled open at the front. He was well-built and muscular, cheeks flushed with drink and any number of narcotics brewing in his system. When he smiled, it was like a cheshire cat smile. He sized up Vergil, then motioned to the girl with a glass of Merlot. "How much?"

"What do you mean?"

"You haff come to sell her, yes?" The man had an accent as well, though nothing like the burly man with the lazy eye. This was different; clipped, cut, and slightly ridiculous with his tenor voice. "Make her take off zat jacket. I vould like to see her."

Vergil's eyes narrowed slightly. But before he could actually say so, the girl slid the jacket off and put it over her arm, then handed it off to Vergil. She smiled cheerfully and ignorantly, as if none of the things in this room bothered her in the slightest. Vergil sighed as she dropped her sopping clothes into the arms of another girl, who took them away. Vergil sincerely hoped they were going to dry them. The man looked at her with some measure of appreciation.

"_Gut, gut. _I like some meat on my women. So, vhat ist your price? Oh, I'm sorry. I am Marcellus Von Trap. And who are you, handsome fellow?"

He quickly replaced his jacket on his person, his searing scrutiny seeming to put the German man at odds. "Sorry, but I am afraid she's not for sale. We're new to the area."

"New, you say?" Marcellus Von Trap crossed one leg over the other, tipping back some of the Merlot with a smile. "Ja. I can see zat you are not native to our customs. Zis is unfortunate for you, Mister Stranger, for I am not an easily forgiving man. Give me the girl and you vill be free to go." He smiled this time, and when he pulled back his lips, his eyeteeth were obscenely pointed. "This ist not your game, dear boy. The girl ist hardly vorth the trouble. Ve are masters of the flesh, we take what we vant, we partake of earthly and unearthly pleasures... ze only difference is zat we put a pricetag on it. So vhat do you say? I offer five-hundred American dollars for zis pretty mare. You get to keep your head, and you pocket some change."

Vivian looked on at Marcellus as if she could imagine herself crushing his tiny little head with her bare hands. "How d..dare you speak of me that way! Vergil would NEVER give me away for money! He's not after money anyway!"

"Shut up. Marcellus, I think you misunderstand your situation... and for that, you may find yourself paying a price you did not foresee." The half-demon Vergil dextrously sidestepped the coffee table that had suddenly gone flying past his head, stirring his hair. It was the simplest of actions, one foot moving behind the other, tipping his body away from the table's trajectory. The vampire seated on the sofa was on his feet in the next instant, having some inkling that he would miss. When Vivian realized there was going to be a fight, she dived over another couch, grabbing a throw blanket and wrapping it around herself with a scowl.

"Get him, Vergil!" she whooped, pumping her fist in the air. One of the nude women lunged at her throat, fangs bared; defying good sense, Vivian dropped her blanket in order to send a roundhouse kick that knocked her head clean off her shoulder.

The sofas proved no obstacle at all, as Vergil backshuffled out of every punch and kick the vampire could offer as effortlessly as if they were all dancing to his tune. The movements were not lost on Vivian, whose gorgeous gold-orange eyes were inherited from her demonic heritage were as keen as any true demon's. It was probably her one saving grace for all the weaknesses she carried. Vergil snatched up the Yamato and blocked the emerging dagger with it. With a quick flick of his wrist, the dagger went spiralling into the wall with a thunk and wobbling hilt. The women who were laying sprawled on the sofas rose up, faces suddenly spawning inhuman teeth and eyes like those of serpents. They sprang forward.

A bright, silver blade drew a white line in mid-air, and bisected the women's bodies in two. They fell into bloodied halves, cold glistening viscera piling out onto the carpet, bone and flesh smelling rotted and too far gone. Still they struggled against death, crawling toward his pant legs, leaving trails behind them. He kicked them back and pierced their soft skulls with the blade. While their writhing bodies died and melted into dust, Marcellus lunged forward again, blindly, despite his lack of a weapon to match that of the bloodthirsty Yamato. He was dispatched within seconds; he fell backward, his body still stubbornly holding itself together by the sheer power of his vampire blood.

"Vhat the h-hell.. are you!?" Marcellus gasped, his fangs gleaming as his mouth gaped, blood pouring from his gullet.

"My name is Vergil Sparda." He smiled only a little. "Unlike you, my father was the highest ranking demon in Hell. You are simply... scum to do our bidding. You would do well to recognize your masters, filth."

"Y-You... a demon...!" The vampire gurgled; final death was absolutely imminent. With a final gasp, his head fell back against the floor and he dispersed into a thousand black shadows and bits of sand. Vergil stood in their remains, before acknowledging that Vivian was still standing behind a sofa draped in a throw.

She grinned. "That was awesome! You sure showed them! But, what WERE they?" She shifted from one foot to the other, her toes curling, stark white against the carpet.

"I think they were vampires. Now, they're dead vampires." Vergil whipped blood off his sword, bowing his head so that his eyes were hidden. "Go get your clothes, Vivian. They should be dry by now."

Vivian nodded, saluted once, then darted off to chase down the girl who had taken her clothes away. It turned out that she was only human, a servant of Marcellus, who had been marked for vampirism before she felt a strange weight lift from her shoulders a few moments ago. "And yes," she said, "your clothes are drying right now. Some of the leather bits can't be dried that way but they'll be dry soon too."

Vivian smiled. "Hee, you can leave now. But remember Vergil! He's the one who killed Marcellus and set you free! I wouldn't approach him right now though." The small woman tittered. "He hates humans."

The woman paled, then turned to get her coat and flee as quickly as possible. Vivian sneered. "Cowards, just like he said. Waiting around for someone else to save their worthless hides. Tch." She tucked her blanket up higher before she opened the dryer and pulled out her clothes. She squealed happily as the freshly heated fabrics touched her skin. She tried to get dressed quickly, and darted out with her still-damp leather arm-wrap halfway around her arm. "I'm ready!"

"You don't look it." Was that... a smile? Really?! Her eyes lit up and she latched onto his arm, keeping step with him more easily as he vacated the whorehouse without so much as a single glance to the gathering mortal women; terrified in their nude repose, they had collected at the foot of the stairs.

But outside was another story. A nondescript black van had parked on the other side of the street, and its myriad occupants piled out the minute the doors of the whorehouse had opened. Vergil's hand dropped to the Yamato's hilt almost on instinct. The people in the car did not look at all friendly.

"Stop right where you are, vampire!" A soldier wearing a winter muffler and eyes that pierced like precious gems glared from behind a pair of round glasses. "You are not lords of this city, no matter where you decide to haunt!"

"What are you talking about?" Vivian shouted, waving her hands. "We're not vampires! We just killed them in there! They wanted to buy me but when we said no, some guy named Marcellus Von Trap tried to kill us! His whores, too! But Vergil slayed them on the spot!"

His pupils were like small black points in a sea of blue. He stared at the soldier whose sword points gleamed in the moonlight. She was just another human, a pathetic mortal. But the fire in her eyes was unlike much he had seen. He respected that fire, that admirable (yet futile) determination. It was a woman beneath all that masculine energy, her facade failing even before his eyes.

"So am I to believe that you are vampire hunters as well?"

"No." Vergil stayed his hand, but with Vivian babbling on about things these fools did not need know, he'd find it hard to convince them. "What she says... is true."

She motioned for the ring of soldiers to stand down. Vergil start noticing the other life forces, peppered throughout the street. More soldiers that would have been damn near invisible to the naked human eye. The woman was a strategist as well.

"So. Vergil. You say you don't hunt vampires, yet you casually wander into the good country of England and start slaying them as if you are a leading expert in their extermination. I suppose you're capable of handlng that sword that's laying there. I suggest you relax. I am Sir Integra Hellsing, leader of the Hellsing Organization."

"Vergil Sparda."

"I'm V-Vivian."

A voice pervaded the tension. "U-Um, excuse me... there's a strange man upstairs. He hasn't moved for hours and he seems to be in trouble." The women from inside had gotten themselves into some form of decent clothing and were standing behind Vergil and Vivian in the doorway. "No matter what we do, he doesn't wake up!"

"Won't wake up, you say?" Integra stormed past Vergil and Vivian to the girl. The women scattered about, staring at this strangely uniformed woman as if doubting her gender altogether. She moved like a man and held herself with that indestructible British pride. Typical of royal blood. Vergil followed her, as did Vivian who struggled to get through the mob of women who tittered about their handsome sleeping beauty. The stairs creaked, and the musty stink of carnal pleasures filled Vergil's nose. This was where men bought goods of another kind.

It was not anything of interest to Vergil if some strange guy had offed himself in a brothel. But as soon as the three gathered in the bedroom, Vergil nearly fell backward into Vivian. The man on the bed was sleeping peacefully at the moment, but there was blood pooling in his palms from where he'd been clenching his hands tight. There were bites in his throat from multiple women having their way with him. But thankfully he was fully dressed (or as dressed as he could be, with only that ridiculous jacket and chest-belt), his chest rising and falling evenly, a sword decorated with a skull and bones laying beside him, his guns sticking out from under his hips.

Integra was quick to notice the similarities. She looked sidelong at Vergil. "You know this man."

"Unfortunately yes."

"Unfortunately?"

"He's my ridiculous twin brother." Vergil stared down with some shock and a little disgust. Vivian stood behind him, eyes glazed, almost sure she had heard Vergil mention Dante at some point. "I haven't seen him in a... very long time." He then seemed suddenly like a child, mystified and a little shocked. He could not seem to fathom seeing Dante in a place like this, unconscious as if he had been caught under a vampire's thrall. Thank God he was still breathing.

"The same thing is happening to Alucard," Integra informed him. "Since last night he has been acting strangely. And now... this. I don't think I need to say they are connected. Alucard was meant to come here and exterminate the vermin here today."

Vergil leaned over Dante, jabbing him with the hilt of the Yamato in the stomach. He didn't so much as twitch. Then he took one arm, pulled him up, then started to manuever him over his shoulder, as if he weighed nothing. "Who is this Alucard?"

"He is the Queen's vampire."

Vergil quirked a brow at her as he sidled to the door. "Whatever. Dante's coming with me. I don't care what you people do."

"Pardon me, but ... you're removing evidence from a crime scene," Integra stepped into his path, eyes smoldering.

"My brother is evidence now? Pretty unsavory evidence, if you ask me." Vergil gazed back at her. It was a match of wits. Or a boring moment. Vivian blinked, looking quickly from one to the other, before she quickly pushed herself between them, one hand on Integra's, er, chest... and the other on Vergil's face, pushing them apart.

"Why don't you let us stay at your house?!" A terrifyingly maniacal grin developed; her eyes gained flecks of gold in the orange. "Ahh, a sleepover at a human's house. This will be fun!"

Human and demon-blooded all piled outside, pushing aside the whores of the vampire Marcellus, and into the back of a second truck that had pulled up behind the last one. Dante was propped against his brother's side, who seemed half-dazed from the entire situation. He was awarded with odd looks from everyone but Integra, who was speaking quietly into an earpiece.

The ride back, dull as watching grass grow, made Vergil sleepy. Adventures in Hell were not suffered lightly. He shut his eyes and leaned his cheek almost unconsciously on the top of Dante's head and promptly dropped off. Vivian jealously looked at her master without speaking.


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Notes: I don't like this fic anymore.. but apparently a lot of people still do so here I go, another chapter - an update for the ages!! Okay, so, no real Vergil/Dante interaction yet... but the next chapter promises more twists than your small and large intestine...

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Night wore silence like a satin drapery. Cold wind nibbled through cloth as if trousers were nothing more than soft cheese and shirts made of loose leaf weave. The snow fell; Dante felt his mind going insane without some kind of driving guitar solo in the background, without drums to pump the blood through his body which slowly began to take on the suspicious signs of frostbite. He chewed at his fingertips to get the blood to move around in them and cease the enroaching tingle creeping there like insects. Beside him the tall and silent nosferatu who called himself Alucard floated along the top of the snow as if he didn't weigh an ounce of what he looked. Dante muttered expletives as his own boots crunched through the hard top layer of white. Whoever dreamed up this nightmare, he had a wacked up idea of the weather. It had spat freezing rain for a good half-hour (it felt like), forcing the two to seek shelter inside a cold house whose occupants were nowhere to be found.

The miserable change in weather summoned a thick soupy fog which obscured their sight thoroughly from the double-paned window. Now the eerie silence dropped around them without mercy, baleful street lamps hovering above somewhere in the white. Here and there a branch in the distance would crackle softly and squeak a complaint under the weight of the ice.

What was more tormenting, Dante wondered, the cold or the goddamn quiet? Every time his foot went down, it felt like an explosion. It was horrible, like listening to bones crunch. Ordinarily it wasn't such a bad sound effect, y'know, he could break a man's face with his fist and make plenty of bones crack that way. But this... this was like breaking the bones of an infant. It made him ill. Was his imagination trying to make him friggin' crazy or what?

It smelled like freshly broken branches everywhere. Dante was suffering the sniffles. He was about to suggest they stop at the restaurant just ahead (or a bar; he hoped a bottle of warm spirits would fire him up to continue this pointless walk) when he stopped dead and swayed on his feet.

"I think I'm gonna be sick." White as a sheet, the half-demon took a half-step back, then his legs buckled completely. Luckily the nosferatu noticed and grappled his arms until Dante was more or less supported against his upper body.

"Take it easy," Alucard said with a lascivious smile. "Like a newborn fresh to walking. Are you so ignorant you can't stand on your own two feet?"

"Shut up," Dante growled. "I'm not ignorant,_ Shadey_." The nickname was hellbent upon carrying a sour flavor of insult, but the nosferatu responded with a chill laugh. "I feel like I'm moving... but I'm standing right here. Hey, maybe, you know - in the real world - someone's got my body!" The realization filled Dante's stomach with hot, directionless anger. "Well, that's somethin' special. What if--"

"It doesn't matter what happens in the waking world."

"Everything that happens in the waking world matters! I dunno about you, but being in a vegetable in the real world is not that high on my list of things to aspire to right now. Get off me!" He shoved off his helping arms and then struck out through the snow boldly, stomping his boots through the icy layer with loud, authoritative cracks.

He left nothing behind him but a series of angry footprints in snow, white powdery substance possibly made from a madman's clockwork powers. Alucard watched with a tempered stare while Dante's attitude swing from cocksure confidence to anxious, silent fuming. It did not impress him at all to watch this whelp submit to the obvious mind tricks of the dreamweaver. When he had felt Dante had done enough to embarass himself, he quickly closed the distance in the blink of an eye and smacked him so hard that the white-haired demonslayer fell sideways, face-first, through the door of the very same restaurant he had been talking about.

Alucard glared down at him from over the rims of his orange shades. "Get up. Clear your mind. Your pathetic little tantrum will attract unwanted attention, or haven't you noticed the multitude swarming all around us in the fog? Perhaps you were too busy arming yourself with misery to get your head out of your ass and look around."

Dante eyes flashed. His anger found an outlet, a subtle but noticable tinge of red staining in those crystal cool blues, a heat that had nothing to do with the unseasonal warm breeze flowing through the air. Fueled by a spark of dexterity the fuel of red, thumping strength twined with the freedom of man's choice for good or ill, Dante lashed out with his legs and let his hand fly to his gun.

But Alucard was no pushover, of course. And they both knew it, so that was why Alucard showed him some mercy by merely tapping the side of his head with the back of his head to send him crashing into a table instead of ripping his skull from his head. That would have been the end of it. But there was some respect for Dante; what he did was destroy monsters, while being a monster himself. Yet he was painfully human. Every imperfection was a boon to his struggle toward his humanity.

Alucard grinned ear to ear. "How fun. It's like playing tag with a kitten. Get up, little kitty."

Dante didn't take the bait this time. Smart of him. He congratulated himself by returning to his feet with a leg-kicking flourish. "You're a real asshole, like someone else I know."

The restaurant, by silent mutual ceasefire, became an ideal subject of interest, as they realized it was fruitless to be bickering at one another and that their surroundings were anything but benign. When Dante noticed the table he had crushed underneath him with his fall had been covered in a fine red cloth that was like velvet, he jerked his eyes to the rest of the room. A large chandelier hovered precariously above; it jingled softly in the wind coming in from the doorway. Each crystal was shaped like a tear-drop. They quivered like they would falll from the chin of heaven and scatter sorrow for all unrealized dreams. Each tear shivering there seemed to give off a note of bittersweet sorrow and, deeper with, murderous bitter loathing.

Dante knew, instinctively, that if he looked too long he would not look away again and it would be the last sight his eyes beheld. He squinted and tore his gaze back to Alucard.

"This place is safe, I think, except that." He meant the chandelier. "But it's warm in here at least. Sit down. Perhaps we'll recieve some form of service, hm?"

But the ancient monster was too involved in staring at a painting above a baby grand piano shining in the pale glow of a sixty-watt bulb within a stained glass jar. The menacing figure in the painting glowered with eyes like small black coals beneath dark, bushy brows. The skin was painted like a grim countenance of death. Alucard ignored Dante completely, circuiting the room at a human's pace; around the red-clothed tables, clean and spotless; past the gleaming mahagony bar with comfortable cushioned stools, a rainbow selection of bitter spirits behind the glass case protecting them; directly to reception desk through two wide French doors to a room with sofas and more terrifyingly macabre portraits.

Dante ignored everything and made a beeline for the double doors. He watched the painting above the baby grand; he wanted to make sure, though he knew not what possessed him to take such a silly caution, that those black beady eyes in that portrait were not following him.

Satisfied, he barged through the stainless steel double doors to the kitchen area. Spotless working areas, tall top-of-the-line fridges. With thunder beneath his boots, the devil killer gave a small whoop of joy as he jerked on the fridge doors until the prizes within were riches for his growling stomach. No cold pizza, but there was smoked ham - which he broke open and ate right out of the plastic container as he eyeballed the case of beer far in the back. Had to be enough in there to get him at least a little loose and relaxed.

In minutes he camped out in the kitchen, cracked a bottle cap off with his teeth and guzzled the stuff. Where was that Bats guy, anyway...?

With food and drink in his system, he tried working out the possibility that he would never wake up. But, well, hell, he was a man of action and if there was something he had to kick, slash, shoot to shit, or insult, then he would be there ASAP. Just as soon as he could figure out where this prick or monster WAS...

He heard the soprano pings of the chandelier. He rubbed his ear, listening again. Now it was starting to sound like frickin' music. Great.

He nearly urinated on himself when Alucard appeared near him. "What are you doing?"

"Fueling up," Dante responded in kind. The food in his mouth was beginning to taste like ... sand, gritty, his teeth scraping together in disgust. And that damn chandelier was jangling around like a pack of baboons were swinging on it.

His brain contined its terrible ticking; he swung his gaze lazily to the figure haunting the other end of the room. Though that crimson silhouette looked like the vampire and smelled like him, he knew he could not trust what had been his faithful senses since the day he was born. One hand gripping the smoked ham he had sliced off for himself, he allowed the other to creep along his jacket to the pair of trusty sidearms holstered at his back.

"What do you think you're doing?" the vampire doppelganger noted dryly and with some distaste. "You can't--"

The words were murdered by the sound of Ebony firing into the void between the doppelganger's eyes. The bullets left no mark except a black dot, which seeped a likewise darker substance than blood.

Dante kept sighting him down the barrel, not moving an inch from where he was: legs splayed, leaning his feet on the seat of a stool, his butt firmly planted on the stainless steel workstation by the fridge against the wall. One would have thought him perfectly at home were it not for his state - sorely standing out with a battered, scratched, wet leather trench hanging over him, more brown than red, and a glistening, scratched modded DE staring the imposter in the face.

"Bub," he said, "you picked the wrong man to fuck with today. Now--" He hopped down, munching on a piece of ham, "you're gonna stand there for a minute... till I finish this mouthful. And then you're going to probably attack me. Fail. Then I'm going to put so many holes in you there won't be nothin' left but scraps of steaming whatever-the-hell you're made of."

The rather large black hole stopped bleeding, and the figure gave a believable sneer that matched Alucard's propensity for madness. "So I see. A monster of your cailber is not so easily persuaded by a lie."

The conversation found its end before it could even begin, as soon as Dante swallowed the bite in his mouth and pulled the second gun from its holster. And there was thunder, blinding flashes of gunpowder ignitions in the large white clean space of the kitchen. Alternatively, the vampire's clone seemed undisturbed and stood still as crystalline statue, serene in all but that maddening smile.

The bullets struck the body. But the creature did nothing in response except bleed. When the bullets failed to fell the fake freak, he drew the sword of his father, Rebellion, his blood boiling and sweat creeping down between his shoulder blades. There was no way to guarantee anything in a dream will work the same way it did in reality. Assuming this was a dream...

The doubt of his own existence was gnawing at the back of his mind. He remembered the bone-tingly warmth of stepping through the portal to the strange town where people had a funny way of talking. He tried to remember that little girl, the captivating brightness of her eyes, the cute way her young mother seemed determined to keep her safe from Dante. If he could discover when he had started to dream this weird dream, maybe he could find a way back - back to where he was really needed, away from this morbid bloodsucker and get some REAL food--

The monstrous apparition before him wavered slightly, laughing at his own thoughts as if they had been spoken aloud. "You cannot go back. You are mine to toy with, to conquer and tame!"

"To conquer? Uh, I think you're a little bit confused..." He stepped back, a little surprised by the sound of shattering glass. The doppelganger had become no more; he was now a solid, black, undulating mass hovering before him, shivering so hard it seemed he was making the whole room vibrate. But the breaking glass sound was louder than Dante remembered.

Then the mass dove toward him. He leapt away... but the floor itself turned a charred black and leapt after him, catching hold of his feet and whamming him into the floor. The choking, watery darkness consumed him in less time than it took to say "Oh, shit".

Mouthful after mouthful of the darkness filled him. He thought if he drank anymore he would burst. His guns were useless, his fingers kept pulling the triggers but nothing was coming out. Desperation clawed inside his ribs for air like a wild thing, a thing with teeth and angry red eyes. He still had one weapon left... one last bid for some kind of control over a situation he thought was under tight security...

He squeezed liquid out of his lungs with a spray of liquid. The blackness was cut by the unblinking gleam of a thousand crimson, pulsing eyes. Everywhere. Into eternity... as if they came from some crazed bastard's nightmare. The eyes drew near, and Dante could have sworn he heard the voice of a man in bleeding outrage. He tensed, guns shoved into their holsters almost as soon as he felt rows of jagged, painful teeth sink into his body... and he was pulled from the jaws of death, certain that if he died here he would never wake up again.

Beyond the sea of darkness, he was deposited rather roughly to the ground, teeth-marks and all. He blew liquid out of his lungs, choking until he had tears in his eyes. He felt disgusted with himself... and that voice.

"Simpering fool. You cannot eat here, you cannot sleep here, you cannot DIE here. And that water you're vomiting on my shoes is not real either, so stand up!" A hand seized his jacket and righted Dante onto his feet. The same hand smacked him in the face so hard that his ears were ringing.

Dante rubbed water out of his eyes, forcing himself to look cool while doing it. "The hell?! Thanks for NOTHING, you-- What the HELL is that?!"

The head of an enormous dog was slathering on the floor of the kitchen, its one red visible eye watching him with the same steaming hatefulness that the vampire's eyes held. Its teeth were enormous and for a moment, Dante's healing wounds stung with memory.

"Never you mind. That man whose trap you practically danced into must be the weaver of this nightmare." Alucard's expression teemed with a litany of emotions, mostly excitement.

"Is he still here somewhere?" Dante looked around, licking his lips. His clothes were dry. The longer he disregarded the previous event, the better he felt. Good. So maybe denial was the answer to this riddle!

_Dante._

The voice echoed through. The kitchen was utterly silent. Alucard stood still. The monster dog head sank into the floor, swallowed by the clean-swept linoleum tiles. He cocked his head to listen, turning away from Alucard as he stepped outside into the dining area.

_Dante!_

The voice was hellishly familiar. He noticed that the chandelier had fallen - so that was the sound of breaking glass - and stepped toward the fallen crystals. The voice that called his name sent a racing chill of expectation down his spine. He felt someone familiar was nearby, someone... he had known for a long time. It gave him comfort, but contrasted with the eerie distrust.

He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. It had to be him. He had to have found him somehow! But then that only meant... he was no longer trapped in Hell...

"You should be careful from now on," Alucard was chiding, having followed his progress. "I doubt I'll be able to save your sorry ass every time you... walk..." The gaze of the vampire was drawn to a table to the far left, near the parlor with the chairs. Almost hidden behind the cloth of the table, a small person - maybe a chld - was sitting with his chin on his hands.

Another trick, Dante thought, pulling a gun. "Alright, brat. Enough of your bullshit. I want to wake up and I want it NOW!"

"I don't have anything to do with him," the kid said. "I just heard the crash of that thing and I came running downstairs. I don't know what you're talking about!"

"Boy," Alucard confronted. "Who is HE?"

"I said I don't know what you're talking about!"

"But you said you had nothing to do with 'him'. Which leads me to believe that you know exactly what I'm talking about." The vampire crossed the room via flying over the tables in his way and throwing the final table aside, revealing the petite form of a young boy in a pair of scuffed jeans and a black T-shirt with a chipped skull print on the front. "Are you a prisoner here too?"

"I like it here," the boy replied, sinking into the chair. "I don't like you."

"Talk," Alucard raised his left hand. The motion was so simple, but there was a great, monumental menace in it. He stroked the boy's tangled brown locks. "Speak. In this world, I am not above hurting little children."

"Hey!" Dante protested.

The boy squeaked, frozen stiff by the power of a vampire's stare. And the power of his voice, too, had a positive effect. "The one who controls this dream is a man who says he's Pan, but I dunno who that is or what he wants. He's got a guy who does his nasty work for him, killing off dreamers. He goes by this place in a black carriage led by four dark horses at seven. It's almost seven now."

"Then it's time to greet the master of this facade." Alucard was almost at the door as soon as he spoke the words. The boy reached after him, the spell on him broken.

"Wait! You caaan't!" The patter of small feet followed Alucard outside, into the cold snow.

"Sorry, kiddo. Majority rules." Dante jogged after the vampire. And outside, the pair waited, guns at the ready... not knowing whether to weep for relief to finally have a chance to make sense of this, or to grit their teeth and prepare for a long, miserable haul.


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Notes:** Okay, this fic is getting serious on me. Nuu! I wanted it to be a crack fic, because I don't really have one. I guess my Legacy of Kain fics can count as crackfics... but nah, this one's a weird almost-serious one. WAI.

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**(CHAPTER 4 GOES HERE)**

He was roused by Vivian, who had come over to pull on his sleeve and pat his cheek. He had been dreaming a strange dream, about a boy who was running in a snow-lined street and a man with a wide, fanged smile like a psychotic jester. He almost cracked her in the face, but the arm he was going to use was still tinglingly asleep, being stuck under Dante.

The beautiful Hellsing Estate looked less than friendly. Floodlights in the color of red bathed everything in the bloody glow of suspicion. He felt the tumultuous presence of a greater being bearing down on his supernatural senses, surprised in spite of the knowledge that this Alucard - or whatever it was - was a vampire. He had felt nothing like that from that bumbling lech Marcellus Von Trap, nor from his supernatural whores.

He found himself suddenly in a situation then. To his left, Dante was unconscious against his side, breathing calmly and gently, a warm and strangely comforting weight with one leg sprawled over his thighs. It was almost cute. He could probably take his amulet now, save himself the trouble of fighting over it, and leave these other British pigs to their vampire slaying. If Dante was foolish enough to fall for some spell like this, it was justifiable that he shouldn't be the owner of the other half of their mother's amulet. But, regardless of that, he knew that any sort of magical ritual, spell, or supernatural activity would require both of the brothers to make it work.

Vergil just couldn't see himself drag Dante on a sled to the nearest Hellish artifact club, explain to the attending Satan worshippers that Dante was a necessary component to invoking evil, and so on and so forth. He really couldn't.

In half an hour, the vehicle had reached a doubly reinforced garage door guarded by armed Hellsing soldiers, their insignias bright and important-looking. Vergil was almost tempted to be impressed that these humans could maintain such an organized operation under the pressure of supernatural circumstances. And at the hub of this great organization there was a thing called Alucard who was their trump card for any freaks. At the present, like Dante, he was incapable of waking up from some sort of sleep.

Dante's brow furrowed. As the doors open his brother coughed violently, seemed to throw up but nothing was produced but for the horrible gagging sound. It went on for awhile, and everyone stopped to stare at them as if it was Vergil's fault. It went away quickly, and Dante settled down as if nothing had happened. Vergil twitched slightly, irritation coloring his eyes a darker shade of blue. He pulled the man from the truck and again balanced his weight over one shoulder. "He's my brother," he growled, glaring at the men with a stretcher, who disappointedly trundled the thing away.

Integra Hellsing appeared beside him, the menace in her expression showing fairly clearly on the firm set of her jaw. She looked at him squarely in the face, a crooked smile forming on her lips while she did so, as if she had a very wonderful secret and wasn't going to tell.

"There are plenty of rooms; you may retire there, while I discuss this nonsense with my equals. Our butler will show you the way." She nodded to the aging man with silver-streaked hair. He seemed to have a pretentious smile that spoke volumes of secrets he would never tell. He looked old enough to be at least in his mid-sixties.

"What about me?" Vivian interjected, pressing herself up against Vergil's side as if she could not get away. Her bizarrely colored eyes warranted a second glance from Walter. She wore her new dry clothes, but she still smelled like she had just come from the pits of eternal stench. Vergil seemed no better. "I'm not leaving my master! He's my good master and won't ever send me away--"

"Girl, go take a bath and leave me be."

"WHAAAAT?" Vivian looked positively scandalized. A maid approached with a clothespin sealing her nostrils shut and dragged Vivian away. "Vergil, whyyy?"

Walter inclined himself at the waist slightly toward Vergil Sparda. They met each other's eyes, in which the two evaluated each other at a distance.

Finally, Walter said, "Come, this way, please." The aged man moved with the stealth-like walk of a old cat who still knew some tricks, and cast wary glances through the monocle he wore at one eye at the honored guest. Through marble corridors and stone and wood walls, with paintings of people Vergil did not know but whose faces carried the weight of great responsibility and secrecy, the half-demon swordsman felt every part of the way that there were eyes everywhere, watching him. Something dark and restless stirred among these walls, and its presence crept along his skin under his clothes as if it married itself to every atom of the air. He gave a pained growl and adjusted Dante's body better on his shoulder.

The room was beautiful, Vergil had to admit. It was huge enough to be an apartment all by itself, including all of the usual fixtures of a sink, and an open-door bathroom attached to it. The four-poster bed was made of unstained walnut, and there were dressers and a large mirror. Vergil looked at himself in the mirror just for a minute , while the butler opened the shades and let in some moonlight, then turned on a lamp, filling the room with a rosy pleasant glow. He didn't admit it to the butler, but he felt rather peaceful. It was a swell change from the dark, stinking whorehouse of the vampire.

"Please enjoy your stay. I will send maids to attend your brother while you join Sir Integra and the Knights to palaver later."

" 'Palaver'?" Vergil echoed, watching as the man left the room to wait outside. He shut the door and when he was alone with the sleeping twin demon, he tried to force the knots from his back and all over his body that had been plaguing him with pain for awhile now; his brother slept on obliviously. He walked to the bathroom, convinced that he wouldn't miss anything all that important if he took the time to bathe himself.

Hot water. Clean, fresh hot water, too! And he was without that simpering little female around, clinging to him, "master" this and "master" that. He dumped his clothes in a reckless heap onto the floor by the door, and almost fell into the tub when it was full, soaking the stink of the demon realm from his skin. It was a huge, round porcelaine tub, and he was chin-deep in water just by sinking down a little. His feet barely touched the other end of the tub. He washed his hair and had added oils to the water that smelled rather nice. All of the bath paraphernalia had musical sounding names, and he didn't remember what even most of them were. Not that it mattered. He scrubbed at his skin with a rough cloth and soothed it with a soft one. Then he changed the water and soaked in a fresh bath; the water wasn't as hot as before, but it had a relaxing property that put him more at ease than he wanted to be.

Time seemed to come to a tepid crawl, and his head rested to one side, his arms stretched out where his fingers could touch the hilt of his sword where he left it leaning against the tub. Lulled on the tides of near-exhaustion, he let himself find a place between waking and sleeping called "dreaming".

The world went black, and he felt as if he was floating - understandable for sleeping in a bath tub can do that to people - but he heard a voice he didn't know.

_"--get ready; I hear the horses coming now."_

On cue, the sound of horses hoofbeats on the ground. He felt their reverberations as they pounded up the stone-cobbled pathway nearer and nearer. The same voice shouted_, "Now! Stop him!!"_

There was gunfire, and some of the cracking reports sounded so familiar. Horses screamed in agony and crashed heavily to the earth. A wagon of some kind sounded as if it fell over. Vergil listened harder, his chest twitching and making the water ripple; the gunshots gave way to the sounds of a snarling monster and a chain of explosions that would have hurt Vergil's metaphysical ears. He winced, wanting to see what was going on! Then all of a sudden, Dante's voice shouted unintelligibly in pain from farther away, then the voice sounded closer in his mind.

_"Shit! I can't shoot like this-- Hey, kid get out of the goddamn way!"_

"Dante!!" Vergil sprung from the water, his knuckles white as he held the Yamato tightly, spilling bath wtaer over the edges onto the floor; he was poetry in motion, glowing and steaming from his skin from the hot bath as he ran to Dante, who writhed on the bed. He was choking on blood now; on his chest were blossoming bright red holes which seeped hot vitality. It seemed the wounds were springing up from nowhere. Vergil rippled with shock, for the wounds maintained their steady pumping of blood.

As if he had no idea that he was still nude, he crawled onto the bed and pulled the top sheet away. "Dante!" he yelled again. He heard the door open, heard Walter enter and stop frozen and turn right around as he saw the very naked Vergil stuffing the sheets into bleeding bullet holes.

"What the hell is going on?" Walter wanted to know, though somehow maintained the serene calm of a mindless butler.

"Get that bitch back in here," he snarled at him, his eyes smoking crimson. "Something's happening to Dante!" With a chill settling into his bones that had nothing to do with being undressed, he looked down at Dante's quickly paling face. "We both have demon blood inside of us... and wounds don't stay like this!"

* * *

The two gentlemen in red stayed in the center of the street waiting for the coach, while the boy kept inside the doorway of the restaurant. Dante did not complain one bit about the cold. He was actually feelin' pretty good, even though he had almost drowned (somehow) in that weird black shit in the other room. He stretched out his arms and shook out his legs and, well, was kind of glad he was dry. He couldn't help, however, noticing that his companion looked a bit tense.

"So, what... exactly do you do?" Dante asked quietly, to draw him out of his weird silent brooding.

"I kill vampires at the behest of my master, Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing." He was checking his weapons; Dante saw the craftsmanship and felt a surging desire to get a closer look at his guns. "These bullets," Alucard explained, "are made from a silver cross in Manchester. They're quite effective in butchering those weak little peons that call themselves nosferatu when they're really nothing like me..."

"So, you're a vampire?" Dante grinned ear to ear. "I met this fine woman in Hell once... and she was a vampire too. She tried to suck on me, but in the end she was suckin' bullets instead of blood."

"Didn't you already tell me about that?" Alucard complained, sounding bored, but really, he was impressed. "How did she end up in that tower?"

"Damned if I know. She wasn't the first freak I dispatched there, either..." Thinking about that place made Dante regretful, and he didn't like feeling regretful. The last image he had of that place was watching his brother fall... fall forever, into Hell, and the sting of a sword cutting through his hand.

"You'll see him again," Alucard said suddenly, and looked just as surprised as Dante. "Sooner than you think." He smiled as if something had dawned on him.

Dante felt warm all over, and wished he could believe him. Damn, but this vampire bastard was a weird one! He said some pretty strange shit half the time. He hunched his shoulders, leaning his blade over his shoulder and kicking snow. The boy was still in the doorway, drinking hot cocoa he had made quickly before.

Alucard suddenly stiffened, and his eyes keyed into the direction of a sound that was growing louder. "Get ready; I hear the horses coming now."

The sound was clear and bright, clattering through the dull blanket of snow as if it seemed to come from another world all on its own. Alucard seemed to rise from the ground, every strand of hair moving upward as did the corners of his mouth; a smile to scare the Devil himself. Dante wasn't paying attention, luckily. His own neck hairs bristled like a wolf's at the coming of something... strange, powerful, and otherworldly. This whole damn place was fairly freaky, but something about the coming carriage felt like... an opening and closing of a door.

He felt the ground tremble under his boots as the carriage turned the corner; it was pure black, trimmed with gleaming silver, like something purely out of the 1900's. There were four muscular, gleaming black steeds in silver traces leading the thing along at a liesurely pace. The man at the reins was stooped over and looked like a scarecrow wearing a coachman's clothes, with a head of thick knotted straw hair. As the driver sitting on the seat saw the pair in his path, he whipped the beasts faster. Their breath was fiery hot and their eyes beamed with a steadfast glow like hot coals.

Nightmares, Dante thought, and steeled himself with Ebony and Ivory warm in his hands. "Now! Stop him!" Alucard laughed, and fired at the oncoming stampede with both guns, and the constant thunder of four guns reporting at once shattered the illusion of a winter wonderland into pieces. The animals' hides exploded with red demonic blood, and reared with their forelegs kicking wildly. The carriage groaned; the animals screamed and screamed, falling on top of each other while the coach toppled, spilling the driver onto the snowy street. The stink of animal blood filled the air. Dante lunged into action, firing at the coachman, driven by the smell of demon blood that made his own sing for the killing.

Alucard shouted something else, but nothing could be heard over the dull roar in his ears. He felt his body loosen; dream-like, as if time was slowing down, both guns exploding from the muzzles in a slow-mo timelapse. The straw-headed man, however, did not make a satisfying sound when the bullets struck. They made a dull, wooden noise as they connected with his quarry. The strawman collapsed into just what he was - a scare crow with nothing for hands except gnarled twisted branches.

The twisted fingers twitched once, before lunging toward Dante, growing thicker and longer and tipped in lethal points. Dante's sword, Rebellion, dashed the spikes to oblivion; the wood crashed uselessly like tree trunks felled in a forest; the half-demon landed on top of them, almost lost his balance as they settled beneat his feet. He was about to call it a day, when he noticed the carriage on its side. The door flew open - actually, it was more accurate to say it was blown off its hinges - by a severe blow from the inside.

Rising from within it was a robed figure, whose voluptuous fabric seemed to be engorged with wind... then it blew outward, and the - thing - wearing it turned toward them. Alucard had not moved from his spot, guns held up at an angle to the sky, a bored look on his face until he saw the cloaked figure rise from the overturned coach like a cloud of choking, black smoke.

The figure wore a mask, not unlike the Oni masks certain demons wore when Dante went demon-hunting for Asian contractors. Folks would complain of old demons coming to haunt them due to ancestors' greivances and Dante, the good demon-slayer, would hunt them down and lay the beat-down on the upstart monsters. It gave him a grim satisfaction, knowing he was putting an end to centuries' old haunters and giving some Japanese folks some peace of mind.

But this thing was nothing like the grumpy restless demons of the past, bored of eternity and itching for trouble. This thing reeked of stagnating evil and devoured souls, and water invested by disease-causing bacteria. It made his stomach convulse, and he had to swallow hard to keep from vomiting. The mask was simple; it was a sickly white with black slits for eyes, and two prominent red "fangs" painted close to its nonexistent mouth. It looked cracked and stained with what Dante knew was blood.

Without hesitating, Dante fired. The creature opened its wing-shaped cloak wide and took the bullets. He felt a blast of cold air behind him and then - pain exploding from every inch of his back. He cried out and stumbled forward, and looked at the blood peppering the snow - coming from the bullets he had just fired at the masked demon. He coughed blood, then his gorge rose too hard and he vomited on the snow. The creature was silent as death itself and didn't seem to feel the need to gloat at his dilemma.

"Shit! I can't shoot like this!" He spat from his mouth, and watched out of the corner of his eye as Alucard slowly and methodically approached the demon. Dante saw a veil of crimson appear, not an inch around his body and clothes. The vampire still wore that half-smile, baring just one of his prominent fangs.

"This is interesting. You've done me a favor, Dante - jumping ahead like the damned idiot that you clearly are. I can imagine my bullets would do the same if I tried the same tack. So we have our little problem!"

Silence from the masked demon, who had moved perhaps three feet toward the pair. Dante felt the sting of Alucard's words kindle some urge to reply, but was too busy keeping the rest of his meal down. For now, it was Alucard the nosferatu's turn at the game table. He drew back his arms and holstered his guns; Dante's hope flagged. What was he thinking!? Alucard rolled back one sleeve; then the other, all very calmly, and the Oni demon waited. The sigils on the backs of his hands warmed up, then heated to a crimson flare. Alucard's face underwent a horrific transformation, eyes growing wide, and lips peeled back from rows of shark-like, razor-edged fangs. He rushed the demon Oni; Dante held his burning breath inside lungs that felt like they were on fire.

The vampire's arm shot forward, hand formed like a bladed-spear. It struck the smoky materal of the demon's body - passed through... and not far behind Alucard a black portal opened and his hand re-appeared from thin air behind him, and his fingertip of his middle finger poked him in the back - Alucard had held back at the last moment when he felt the cold air against the back of his neck above the collar of his red coat. His smile widened just before the black wings closed around him and Alucard simply disappeared... and reappeared again, clawing at the mask with the veritable ferocity of a tiger. Half of his body was submerged into the blackness as if he were taking a dip in the chest of the demon.

"Alucard!" Dante shouted, rushing forward, and stopped at once by Alucard's chastising words.

"STOP, IDIOT!! Don't come any closer!!" He twisted his head around to look at him, the words forming on his lips as he pulled and held onto that mask like it was his only lifeline. "Turn that blade against yourself, for the devil's sake!" Those were the last words he spoke before the choking smog that was the demon's living cloak devoured the vampire's body completely, darkness closing over his head like brackish water.

Alucard was gone. Dante was alone now, except for the brat who was cowering like any sensible kid would do--

"Alright," Dante said, nodding slowly, acknowledging his situation which approximated "fucked" in all the wrong applications. "Alright, man. That's cool." No, it wasn't cool, but Dante was still thinking as the creature turned toward him and advanced by floating menacingly in the direction of his voice. He held up his hands, before his left went to the sword sheathed at his back. He stood up and sauntered backwards in the harsh snow. Damn, why did it have to be cold?

Dante developed a plan. It was about as foolhardy as he was famous for being, but it had to work somehow. "Come on. Get a little closer. Then we'll see what else your disappearing trick can do."


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Notes:** Chapter 4 was revised... very slightly. I don't know why the hell that happened. It was weird. Erm, anyway... I won't try to go change anything else, I swear it. THIS IS THE LONGEST CHAPTER I'VE MANAGED TO WRITE! When the wordcount came up on the 'documents' page, I was like HOLY SH--. By the way... I had to stop writing at the end and cut off a large chunk that I didn't like, because it was lots of OOC crap of Dante going, "OMG I MISS YOU BRO" And Vergil crying like a little girl going, "I MISS YOU TOO LOL LET'S FIGHT" ...So yeah. None of that. You won't be disappointed, if you like the story so far, here's more.

* * *

**  
(CHAPTER 5 GOES HERE) - TALE OF THE MASKED DEMON & THE DREAMWEAVER**

Sir Integra stared at the wounds now being bandaged by a fairly handy doctor they kept around. Vergil's lip was bit so hard between his teeth that it bled. When Integra handed him a handkerchief he was confused at first, but then she motioned to her lip with a sort of lethargic patience, like dealing with a special needs child. He scowled and wiped his lip, but there was no need. The wound was gone in a second.

Dante was not going to die. His body was recovering more slowly than his normal rate; still, it was much better than a human's metabolic processes. Vergil really couldn't understand why the bandages were so necessary. He soon grew bored with watching and paced outside in the corridor, gripping the Yamato, faithful blade that could solve any problem through gratuitous violence, and felt hopelessly lost. The woman Hellsing came forward from the room with a scowl wedged firmly around the cigar she began smoking. Her mannish presence offended him, and he stared dispassionately through his limp white fringe.

No one knew just what had happened to Alucard in the dream he and Dante shared.

"Something has happened," she said, "and I have no idea where to begin figuring that out. Spontaneous injuries aren't my field of expertise. I believe it's called stigmata. I see you know what that is, too, but surely you don't believe in it." There was a pause where she sucked in smoke, whereby it then curled out through her nose like dragon breath. "Tell me - and correct me if I'm wrong - but I heard you said something about you and your brother being demons."

"That's none of your concern." Vergil wrestled with his own emotions for a second, worried for Dante. Worried about whether or not this whole sleep-curse demon business was going to trump his attempts at winning Sparda's power. And worried that somewhere along the way, he was going to lose his desire to do it at all.

He hated his emotions. He wished desperately for an off switch. They weakened him, made him second-guess his intentions.

"But that's what you said, isn't it? There's no reason to be made nervous here. We're all monsters fighting monsters, in this house." Sir Integra smiled grimly. "But here is where our problems collide. My vampire Alucard will not awaken. He is just as stuck in some fanatical sleep as your brother. Furthermore, I recieved several reports that interrupted my meeting that dozens of people have been reported to suffer the same symptoms throughout Britain. They are all asleep and cannot be woken. These numbers appear to be climbing. They cannot wake up. It's become more than just my problem. Everyone is involved."

"Something is happening," Vergil said. "Ever since I walked onto your property, I've felt something." His voice was tense, and his jaw muscles clenched and unclenched as he thought. "Something _other_. Like me or Dante."

"What exactly are you?" Integra demanded, slamming her hand to the wall to cut off his path of escape. Light from the ceiling fixtures, very tasteful, very expensive, flashed on her framed circular glasses and made her actual eyes disappear. Her other hand rested on a firearm at her hip. Her uniform had been long exchanged for a proper business suit that obeyed the curves of her body. She was attractive, even if she was angry and somewhat more masculine than Dante would have liked. He would have called her 'butch', when Vergil thought of it.

"I'm the son of the demon Sparda and a human woman. Dante is my brother." Vergil looked at her a minute, and she seemed to wait, expecting more. She seemed in no way, shape or form unreceptive to this occult talk. So he told her the legend of Sparda. It was the condensed-for-easy-management version. Integra believe him, or seemed to, because he was grudgingly granted somewhere to go. It did not necessarily mean Integra was wholly on board with his story.

"Your brother will be fine," she insisted without hiding a jot of impatience. "Now go. I don't know where that girl you came with is wandering, but I would rather you keep an eye on her instead of being mother hen over Dante when we've got a full set of staff members ready to do the job."

Irritation clawing up his throat and over his skin like a thousand insects. He couldn't really hold with the idea of her telling him what to do. There were men (and maybe women) in this building who were more than just human, that was probably true, but nothing really instilled him any great fear. He had been too long in Hell, among demons with blood on their minds and eager to wet their tongues with the flesh of anyone lesser than they. His soul burned with a demon's desire to stir something up. He put a damper on it for now. There would be a fight soon enough with whatever had come to this place and cause bloody sweet havoc.

He felt a little tired, too. A sneaking weariness that made him feel sluggish. So he turned away from Integra with a stiff nod and wandered around the estate to think. He was well on his way to finding a kitchen, with tasty human food inside, until he heard voices. He would normally write it off as being overtired, but these were not normal circumstances. Besides, people lived here. They (the voices) were coming from a door that, when he opened it, led downstairs underground. He followed the smell of blood, death, and musty fabric, into a shadowy realm that he began to feel was uncharacterstic to this building and those that lived here. He pushed open a final door at the end of the corridor and saw a woman with straw blonde hair in a pony tail, a black T-shirt and white panties, sitting next to Vivian, on top of a closed coffin in the center of an ordinary little room that just happened to be underground and completely without windows.

The young women sounded as if they were in close conversation and getting along with some degree of comraderie. The half-demon stood in the doorway, his hand still on the door, the other resting as it always did on the hilt of the sword.

"Verg-- Master!" Vivian's brightly colored eyes burned fiercer, with that annoying-but-somehow-endearing devotion that made him at least tolerate her very existence. "This is Vergil, my friend who saved me from the bowels of Hell. The one I was telling you about!" Vivian's propensity for running her mouth unnecessarily somehow didn't endanger her here. The blonde girl blushed furiously, and fell off the coffin to the floor on the other side.

"I-I'm sure it'd be nice to meet you, but I'm not wearing any pants!"

"Vergil doesn't care. He's above all that carnal sexual stuff," Vivian answered cheerfully when he didn't say anything. Vergil wanted to punch his hand through her mouth and count the teeth that fell out.

"This is Seras," Vivian went on, pointing to where Seras had started digging in a drawer, pulling her T-shirt down over her self as much as possible with the other hand. Then she pulled on a pair of cargo-colored pants, secured the button and zipped, and finally relaxed. She smiled brightly and revealed her pointy teeth.

"Seras is a nosferatu!" Vivian chirped. "And she's _so cute_! She wants to be my friend as long as I promise not to kill or permenantly injure anyone. Isn't that wonderful?"

Vergil had not really been looking at her (or even particularly paying attention), but examining the rest of the room. The walls were made of rough cut stone, smoothed only by time. There were discolorations on the floor and walls near the stairs. A carpet covered some of the floor. A second coffin in another room through an open door seemed destitute and borderline creepy. It was by far the oldest thing in the entire basement. Like something out of a cheap, cheesy B movie.

"And you're Dante's brother." Seras walked up to him and held out her hand, a cheerful disposition radiating from her very soul. _Great._ He noticed when she smiled, she had the teeth of a vampire, but her face was full of enduring innocence. "I'm Seras Victoria, agent of the Hellsing Organization and Alucard's Draculina."

_What the hell is a Draculina?_ Vergil wondered, stiffening when he began to notice the aura from this room radiated from the coffin in the next room increasing in intensity. "And Alucard, the one who can't wake up." Without another word, he walked through the girls' presence and toward the melancholy coffin which surely contained the nosferatu. He was curious and, to be honest, disgusted toward the creature. He wanted to see what the freak looked like. Surely not as 'cute and adorable' as the Seras Victoria lady.

He slid his fingers into the crack between the lid and the coffin and began to pull it up when a gust of cold, choking air rose from the coffin and stopped him short. He felt the eyes again. They were in every corner of this black room, red and unblinking. Many-legged centipedes with glistening black carapaces crawled from the cracks in the walls, their mandibles gnashing at him. The presence in this coffin had immense power that it bordered on demonic. He had no doubts that the vampire inside could hold his own well against creatures spewed from the rancid intestines of Hell. He continued anyway; the vampire was in some kind of torpor. What harm could he possibly do?

He made a shocked noise as he pushed the lid aside, light pouring onto the contents. His half-resisted the urge to draw his sword. The nosferatu's eyes were disturbingly wide open, but clouded over, as if he were really truly dead. His lips were pale, white, and his hair was scattered around and messed up as if he had struggled in his sleep. Worse, his mouth was open, and a sort of brackish water was dribbling from wherever his mouth lead to.

A white-gloved hand shot out and latched firmly onto his sword hand. More fluid gushed, seeping into the soft satin fabric that cushioned the body. Alucard was deeply asleep, but something was very wrong with him. Apparently the very same thing Dante had gone through in the van as they got out was happening to the vampire.

Trying to pry his hand from his arm, he used the other to grab his shoulder and pull him up to a sitting position. Why did he extend such compassion to a vampire - notorious to be Because maybe this guy was stuck in the same dream as Dante, and was helping him? The coffin lid rattled to the ground, creating a noise that alerted the two girls.

Seras and Vivian ran in. "What are you doing?" Seras snarled, immediately going to the defense of her master. Yet as she laid eyes on the vampire, she understood. "M-Master!!"

"Get the lady," Vergil ordered. Seras squeaked, eyes bleeding red as she stared at Alucard as he vomited such a volume of water that her gorge rose and she almost spewed herself. Vivian watched with a mild case of curiousity, blessedly mute. "I said go get her, idiot. Stop staring."

Seras turned and fled, moving with rapid speed impossible to reach by mere mortals. In a minute, Integra was also in the room. At this point Vergil had pulled the vampire from his coffin so he did not happen to fill the thing with water.

Vergil wanted to really say something, to speak. But everyone in the room who saw the vampire could rush to that vivid conclusion that any other man would be drowning or dead.

Suddenly he saw two men arrive with Dante carried between them. He was bleeding from an enormous wound that had suddenly sprouted from his chest. More shocking, Dante had a strange expression on his unconscious face. It was a sort of crooked smile, broken by blood from between his lips. Vergil grabbed his sword and stared at his brother. A clean, impalement wound (not an uncommon sight to Vergil). But by his nature, the sight of blood instilled him with fear and hunger, which was the demon's way. He looked at Danet's smile, closely, and felt his fear win.

* * *

Dante fought his way through the snow and weakness that made his feet feel like they had concrete weights on them toward the demon. Sword in hand, he lunged as close as he dared, then ducked aside, trying to fake the demon out. It didn't work as well as he had hoped and it ended poorly. His leg was snared in the black smoke turned tendril. He was violently yanked backward again. 

"That's it," he snarled. "Give me that ugly mug of yours, you asshole." His eyes had a darkening in them, pupils slitted and savage, a permenant smile on his lips. Perhaps in an act of total self-sacrifice, he slammed the sword through his chest to the hilt as he felt his legs begin to absorb through the monster's body. It was terrifyingly cold, colder than the snow. It was so cold that he ceased breathing when his balls fell into the frigid cold.

Just as he expected, the portal opened in front of him and the tip of his sword emerged through the smoke. The sword punched through his chest out through his back, through the monster. In front of him, the sword appeared again, again, again, and he seemed to fall through the illusion of sword after sword going through him. Paradox occured. Over and over. Over and over. The sword continuously fell through the wormhole and the demon made its first sound: a long, howling scream. Its mask cracked. Dante laughed.

"Is this a taste of your own medicine?" he said, tearing his gaze away from the paradox of his own sword impaling for eternity, pretty sure he'd go fuck nuts if he stared too long.

The demon's mask shattered, and perhaps not surprisingly, there was no face. A familiar white-gloved hand clawed through and emerged, attached to an arm in red. The mask was gone, and Dante suddenly felt the demon's power trickle away somewhere, he didn't know. All he knew was he was falling forward into the snow, having enough sense and strength to yank the sword out of himself before he fell on it.

Alucard emerged from the demon's non-face, tearing it apart from the inside. He was soaking wet but that did not seem to hinder him. His own eyes were burning crimson and his fangs were wetted with the essence of the demon. He seemed absolutely elated as he tore free, shedding the demon's body like an animal escaping from an anaconda's belly. He was a horrible thing to look at; good thing Dante was face-down in the snow, bleeding out like a pig.

"Shit," he moaned as he heard Alucard laugh as he crushed the demon's mask into pieces beneath his boot. Sure. The vampire gets out fine, but the demon takes it in the chest like a hero. "Shit, shit..."

"Such profanity. I'm glad you figured it out. I would have done the same." Alucard crouched down and rolled Dante over. "You look quite a mess there. You must hate yourself very much to do such a thing without hesitation."

"I couldn't sleep at night... if I let that son of a bitch eat you."

"Fool," Alucard repeated, his mouth twisting into a sneer. "Don't you know you can die here?"

"Won't matter," Dante said, and for some reason thought of his twin brother. He saw his face, a mask of tormented anger, and felt hurt more ways than just the physical ones. He shut his eyes. "Just get the hell away from me. Go get out of this dream."

The boy, long forgotten, suddenly bounded toward them. The blood and ichor littering the street did not seem to bug him in the slightest. The masked demon's body was nothing but dust now. The horses had crumbled into skeletal husks and the wagon was nothing more than pieces of wood attached to wheels. It was a grotesque sort of Cinderalla transformation.

"Come on," the boy begged, grabbing Dante's arm. "You can't die! Don't give up here. That's just what they want you to do." He sobbed, shaking his arm. "Get up! You've gotta get up..."

"The tears of the innocent," Alucard murmured, watching with a slightly broken heart. No one cries for monsters.

The boy bent his face and buried it in Dante's red leather lapels. Dante had stopped moving and let his life pour out and out. He felt vaguely dizzy and almost amused that this snot-nosed brat was crying all over him while he was dying. He was more worried about the dry-cleaner's and how all this blood was coming off. He wondered if he even needed to take it to the dry-cleaner's. After all, this being a dream...

Then the boy said, "Idiot. You idiot. You're a son of Sparda. I could see it. And this thing, that makes us dream. It's just another demon. Just like all the others before. But it's in your head. It's in my head, too. It's gonna win and you're just gonna lay down, like this?" The boy hiccuped, shaking his head against his chest. "You can't... you just can't..."

(_Dante. Dante_.)

Go away, Dante thought at the voice. He didn't mind dying so much. He was just... tired. Tired of being alone and frankly, tired of dealing with demons. Maybe he'd see Vergil again in Hell. How very proper. It wasn't as if they were going very far. Hell always seemed closer to him than anyone else--

(There's still a chance. To see _him_. Awaken. Dante. If you can stand to do it one more time...)

"Don't leave me, Dante," the boy sobbed. "Don't go away!"

Fine, he thought. You win. I'm getting up now. Better back off. Don't wanna put someone's eye out.

Dante opened his eyes. It took a lot of effort. But the demon blood roaring strong in his veins took the edge off. He liberated that part of himself that filled him with a hunger so deep and so complete, it was a wonder he could sleep at night. The fury, deep and pulsing, resonated with every particle, every hard sinew in his body. It took so much painful effort to draw breath. The boy sat up in wonder, realizing that Dante's wounds were closing. The world trembled and somewhere far away, another creature screamed in outrage to have a soul denied him.

_"The blood of Sparda. Once again, it calls to you... and you answer. Now invoke its power. I want to taste it and memorize it, so I can savor it when I finally devour you."_

"Take a card and wait in line, like everyone else," the son of Sparda growled through clenched, pointed teeth.

Alucard watched from farther away, the boy tucked under his jacket who clung at his pants like a terrified kitten. When he noticed Dante and the way the air seemed to grow stiflingly hot, enough to melt the snow, he pulled the child back before he burned, and fled to the safety of the sidewalk across the street. The snow and wind blew up in his face. Dante was no longer Dante, and man became the devil. Alucard felt a thrill up the back of his spine, filling him with a peculiar fear. This was the power of devils, real ones. Not the ones who freely roamed the earth with their complaints and posturing, but the ones who fought in Hell and strengthened themselves by constant, unending fueds, devouring each other's power for thousands of years. The phrase, the blood of Sparda, made Alucard curious. Just what was this Dante??

What was the monster standing tall in the snow with a body like an Adonis but covered with hard armor, wings unfolded and almost swallowing the sky? "His eyes..." Alucard quivered but did not know it, which was just as well. He was not comfortable with the new emotion now rendering him motionless. Fear. Doing battle with this one would be a fool's errand for any old nosferatu...

But for Alucard, all he could think was, _what a truly terrifying enemy he would make!_

Suddenly, the thing standing in the midst of the nightmare looked at him. His inhuman face gazed impassively at the trembling child and then the vampire. His clawed feet scored the earth as he pivoted to face them. In doing so, he seemed to break the spell over them all and Alucard stepped back once.

The man Dante appeared again, whole and unharmed, though he seemed to move sluggishly. He rubbed his face. The only thing not quite the same were his eyes. "Uh..."

The boy blinked away his tears. "Dante... Dante!" Pure, undiluted joy suffused through his reddened cheeks. He ran toward him and threw his arms around the man's waist, face buried in his stomach. "You won! You really won!"

"Yeah. Guess I did, huh?" Some of his old attitude emerged through his voice. "Sorry for the scare, kid."

"I owe you an apology."

Dante looked up. "Eh?"

Alucard approached, planting his hat on his head. "You are far more than what you appear to be. This is unlikely, coming from me. You stay true to your human self. So few of us would be able to refuse the power you wield. You killed that monster and managed to save me from eternal damnation."

"Nah," Dante corrected. "You're still damned eternally. But that, my friend, is not my fault." He grinned, swiping his hand through his hair and patting the kid's head with the other. "Come on. Tell me you learned something while you were twiddlin' your thums in that thing's belly."

"Ah, that I did." At this point, the snow had stopped falling.

They headed indoors. Dante fixed himself a strawberry sundae because, well, he goddamn deserved one. While he spooned the yummy goodness into his mouth, he absolutely refused to let himself think he wasn't _really _eating this, it was all fake. It tasted good enough to him. Maybe it wasn't _smart_ eating dream food but... Dante couldn't give a shit.

The boy was resting on two chairs close together, with his head on Dante's lap. Somehow Dante didn't mind.

"You wouldn't believe it... but I drank some of its blood. Through that conduit, I gained some information. The boy here mentioned 'Pan'. This master of dreams is a demon of some renown. And his ideal plot here is to put everyone in Britain to sleep and destroy their minds, one by one, and devour their souls. When he devours enough of them... he will be able to use that power to open a gateway long enough to let loose hundreds of denizens of Hell. I saw this as clearly as you see me now."

"Well," Dante muffled, spooning more ice cream into his mouth. "That sucks. Did you happen to spy a way to stop him?"

Two crimson eyes closed once, then came a deep sigh. "No."

"Figures."

"But I saw something that might lead us to a happy ending."

"Which is?" Annoyed, Dante shoved a spoonful into his mouth, rolling the strawberry goodness around in his mouth. Damned if this wasn't the tastiest dream-food in like, forever.

"Someone in the waking world has to do this, I think. Someone with the power of a demon strong enough to find Pan's host, kill it, and exorcise Pan back to Hell. Somehow, Pan managed to hitch a ride with someone. And there's something else." Alucard pinpointed Dante with a stare, intently drawing out the pause until Dante fidgeted and growled.

"I saw someone just like you, carrying a Japanese sword and sporting a blue jacket. I also think I know who Pan is possessing. A girl came out of Hell with him. She's been with him ever since."

Dante nearly dropped his spoon. Vergil. His mind suddenly repeated, over and over. VergilVergilVergil. Alucard seemed to leer with satisfaction.

"You better not be bullshitting me," Dante said thickly, for his mouth was still full of melting ice cream. He swallowed hard and it hurt his chest as it went down.

"Don't bullshit a bullshitter?"

"This ain't funny." A gun clicked and Dante was about to pull out a gun, but Alucard looked dead serious. So he stopped.

"I saw him. He's alive. Was he dead before?"

"He--" Dante tried to make sense of what Alucard was saying. He pushed the bowl away from him and leaned back, staring at the table top, his brow creased as he pensively turned over all the things he thought were correct. Vergil had gone to Hell and most likely died or become even more twisted by evil than he already was. Vergil had been gone, so gone that there was still a raw oozing wound where his memory had been before. He missed Vergil so much it hurt. It wasn't "He fell. I saw him. He must have got out of Hell somehow. Somehow.. damn it! This means Vergil's somewhere out there and he's walking around with Pan and doesn't even know it. Shit!"

The boy murmured unhappily and snuggled closer.

"We can't do anything about it," Alucard sighed, feeding off his frustration.

"Anything else?" Dante growled, pinching the bridge of his nose. "We're royally screwed, aren't we?"

"Not exactly. The last thing I saw before I felt an opening for escape was Big Ben."

"Big Who now?"

* * *

"Dante!" Vergil shouted. Then he touched him and his skin was hot. The red that was seeping out of him slowly pooled back into his wound. The sight was not uncommon to those who knew Alucard. A few minutes before, Alucard's weird symptoms ceased and everything appeared to be back to normal. Except that Alucard was still asleep and so was Dante. Vergil held his brought tight, breathing hard, trying not to cry in front of the mortal woman and the entourage of immortals. Vivian seemed to be dealing with everything rather calmly. But then again, she was a denizen of Hell itself. Nothing scared them. She could also have cared less about Dante as well. 

When Dante seemed to improve, color returned to Vergil's face as well as his brother's. He was trembling so hard he didn't know whether it was because he was weak or because he was hungry or just starved of sleep.

"This is ridiculous." Integra spoke aloud, breathless. She was likewise pulling Alucard toward her as she knelt on the ground, brushing his hair out of his face with unnecessary fondness.

Seras was likewise near her master. She touched his hand and whimpered, as if she could feel something horribly amiss. "I don't like this," she whimpered.

The half-demon ignored everyone. He looked at Vivian out of the corner of his eye. She seemed to be smiling. He set Dante on the floor and stood up slowly. The intent seemed clear enough. Walter, the two guards, Integra, even Seras pulled back slightly. Ah, at last. The Yamato felt comforting, spoke a language he understood fairly well.

"Why are you smiling?" he wanted to know.

"No reason," she said. "I'm just enjoying the drama. You're all so amusing, losing your heads over every little thing."

Understanding dawned on him. Integra felt the general vibe and pulled a pistol from inside her jacket. For a human, she was fast. But Vivian was only slightly faster, lurching out of the way to avoid having half of her pretty face blown off in a gory spatter.

Then Vivian changed. She became someone else in a fraction of a second, so there was no long arduous torment. Her body simply was female one second, then male the next. His hair was still black and his eyes still orange, but he grinned ear to ear like the Cheshire Cat. He wore a double-breasted jacket and slacks the color of dark lavender. It was the most sickening color purple he had ever seen.

Other than being overly handsome, he was well-built and was fairly unarmed. "Son of Sparda," the man purred. "What an honor to finally meet you. I've already become comfortably acquainted with your brother. I just can't describe my pleasure, seeing you so desperately hide your wicked human feelings as your brother bleeds to death and there's absolutely nothing your little powers can do."

Vergil clamped his lips shut, his pupils shrinking and lengthening.

"Demon!" Integra snarled, firing her weapon again.

"Indeed." The hole blown through the man's chest pieced itself together like a piece of crockery smashed backwards in time. "But it's not you that concerns me now."

With a small movement of his hand, Integra Hellsing flew back and struck the wall with a sharp pained cry. Blood leaked from her hair and trickled down the back of her blouse. Seras, Walter - the guards were no match. They all flew back. The nosferatu Seras alone seemed to struggle impressively against the invisible force pushing her back. Her eyes flared hellish crimson, but in the end she was cast aside like a rag doll.

"I want you," the man said, stepping toward the still-standing son of Sparda. "Come with me, Vergil. Your name echoes in the corridors of Hell, like a bad aftertaste."

At first, Vergil did not seem to draw his sword; it all happened far too quickly for human eyes to capture. The motion seemed a flawless, perfect example of the swordsmanship ingrained in every inch of Vergil's body. But the Yamato seemed to stop midstrike. Without missing a beat, Vergil retraced the arc of his sword back again and slashed the hand of the demon off in one clean stroke. That alone was not enough; unhalting, he advanced, using the force of unsheathing his sword to strike devestating blows that would have crippled an ordinary, low caste demon. But this was no simple mindless bag of sand. Vergil had thrown every single blow he could to put him off guard. The other man seemed to smile a smile of infinite patience, as if humoring a child.

"You'll never succeed this way." Suddenly a hand out of nowhere snatched the naked blade as it came in that beautiful arc again. Vergil trembled as he fought the immense strength of his foe, though not letting that smile psyche him out. He pulled back, successfully keeping his blade intact while cutting off three of the man's remaining hand's fingers.

"Don't you see, Vergil." The man bowed. "It would seem that you have won. I can't stop your blade anymore. You can cut me down with impunity. Ordinarily you would. But the moment you looked up at Vivian, you were doomed. You see, she's my daughter. Your own ridiculous pride made you underestimate her powers. I'm Pan, and you are now dreaming."

When Vergil finally chanced to look around, his heart dropped into his stomach. Gone was the basement, the people, the coffin, the vampires. His brother Dante was nowhere in sight. In fact, one could say he had completely teleported to somewhere else. He was standing atop a massive tower. He heard gears grinding, something enormous booming in time. The noise vibrated his feet where he stood on a tower. Piles of snow had gathered after what appeared to be a fresh snowstorm. The moon was high and all was washed in white, a winter wonderland that stretched on for miles across an unfamiliar city.

"I'm not dreaming." Vergil breathed deep. "This isn't real."

Blood dripped from his cheek. In this place, he was terribly disadvantaged. If this was a dream... then this dream master was capable of doing anything he desired. Vergil Sparda looked back across at his enemy and sheathed his sword, but kept his hand on the hilt to redraw. "Where's Dante?"

"He's coming soon. Don't worry, child. He's coming and bringing a friend. Then we'll have a party. That is why you are all invited. I couldn't have done it without you, either." The demon stooped forward as if to embrace Vergil but stopped when the blade came out again.

"Don't touch me--" Suddenly, the blade snapped in half. Vergil saw nothing at all for a fraction of a second, only having enough time to register shock, alarm, then steely resolve as he understood that his sword as just broken as if it were a child's toy. Then cold, hard teeth clamped on his throat. Lightning bolts of agony roared in his body; his vision was stained red. He thrashed his head to either side to break the savage hold, dropping the rest of his weapon and kicking his knee toward his attacker's stomach. The dreamweaver barreled backwards and hit the stones near the edge of the tower. When he looked down he saw the street, empty of life, several empty cars left in parking spaces and wearing robes of snow.

"What's your name, demon?" he asked, looking forward again.

"Tricking me out of my true name? You know that it gives you power over me. But for now, call me Pan. It's best we remain on familiar terms, isn't it?"


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Notes: **I have typo problems. I shouldn't have written that one chapter half-drunk then. I guess drinking only expands my attention span rather than restricts it. Sorry. Not a lot of Vergil action in this one! Read Chapter 7, The Melancholy of Vergil Sparda, to find out more!

* * *

**CHAPTER 6 - ILLUSORY**

It was literally Hell on earth. London's populace were dropping to the ground, dead asleep, everywhere. In the streets; in the park; in the kitchen; in the soccer field; in the playground; in hospitals, in garage repair shops, in malls. Everywhere. Such large quantities of sleeping bodies accumulated that no one was safe driving vehicles; it was impossible to walk anywhere without possibly stepping on someone. Cars collided in the streets, drivers slumped against the wheels. Those that remained awake cried with terror, unable to feel safe in their own homes, lest this mysterious pall of unconsciousness take them too.

And then the sleepers, draped in their peaceful doze, began to convulse, screaming in mindless horror before their pounding hearts burst inside their chest. The corrosion of their minds could not be traced back to a definite source; the malignancy of demons was new to this world. There was no magic invented to stop it from enroaching across the lone isle of England.

Death came blissfully in sleep, but whatever happened in their minds was anyone's guess.

Integra wept tears of pure undiluted rage and helplessness. She couldn't wake Alucard. Now Vergil had fallen unconscious and worse, she was beginning to lose staff members to the phenomenon.

Pan had gone somewhere. She couldn't begin to guess where. Fear of the unknown and the idea of demons invading London filled her with the need to pray. Instead, she found herself reaching for the phone and dialing Iscariot's emergency line. She had heard few words from the Queen and the Ambassy. Nothing good. It was chaos.

It was good to hear a voice, even if it was the ever so prim and proper lilt of a Roman Catholic. "This is Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing. Get me on the line with Enrico Maxwell, if you please."

Maybe it was a fool's hope to believe that Enrico Maxwell and Iscariot would give so much as one whit of compassion for their English enemies. Even when the world may be threatened. She wanted to speak to anyone who knew monsters just as she did.

"I am sorry, Sir Integra. There is nothing we can do for you. Perhaps you should have considered a more open hand of friendship--"

"Just so you could have the pleasure of cutting it off!" she snapped, her eyes blurring behind her round glasses. "This phenomenon does not care if it be English or Romans it destroys. Where do you think it will go once it has finished with us? It will feast on the vapid Christian minds that you and so many others hold yourselves above the rest for!"

"I can attest that you aren't the only one with problems," Enrico Maxwell replied, his annoying voice wane and chill over the phone. "But for now, you will stay where you are, alone, and rot like the Protestant trash you are. In the end, you will all die for your sins."

Integra screamed at the four walls after Enrico hung up, rudely, in her ear. She threw the phone against the wall and Walter was not there to soothe her. She was afraid. Integra Hellsing didn't _like_ being afraid.

* * *

"Kid, you better stay here." Dante tucked the kid into a soft warm sofa next to the bar. The fancy schmancy restaurant seemed to suddenly become slightly darker. Night seemed to be falling on the dreamworld, though it could just be at the will of the dreamweaver Pan. "You'd be better off just shutting your eyes and ignoring everything that happens, if something does, alright?"

The young boy gave a little shudder and hid his mouth under his shirt, glaring. "I don't want to leave you."

Dante sighed. _Damned kids. They're so sentimental. _"Seriously. You _don't _wanna be where I'm going." He cracked a slight grin, tousling the brat's hair. " Besides... when you wake up, this will all be just a stupid dream, right? So forget 'bout me and Bats here."

"But... But I-I don't--" The boy suddenly went very quiet as soon as Alucard peered over to the pair. His crimson eyes bartered no further argument from the child. He was enough to terrify a full-grown man to pissing himself. So it was no big task to scare a kid into shutting up and doing exactly as he's told.

"Trust me." Dante walked away, his gun-belt jingling softly as he sauntered outside. "You'll be happier when you wake up."

In the frigid night, the world had changed. There was a very noticable, black menace to the sky, the way the snow fell straight down, and looked gray rather than purest white. Dante rubbed a snowflake between his thumb and forefinger when he caught one and discovered the snow was actually ashe.

Alucard the nosferatu looked on as well, an unhappy crease in his forehead, his glasses losing their gleam. He took them off and tucked them safely away.

"We're going to need speed," Alucard warned, watching Dante break the window of a vehicle. He clicked his tongue and jogged over to another and looked inside after smashing it out as well. When he unlocked the door, the car suddenly turned over onto its side and grew a head, its car door becoming a deranged skull and the broken window a hungry, sharp-toothed mouth. Dante yelled as he leapt backward, pummeling the car in the gas tank with bullets. The gasoline caught the energy, heat within the speeding objects, and combusted gloriously. Dante huffed, spinning Ebony and Ivory with impatience.

Alucard placed a hand on his shoulder, then sank his fingers into his leather jacket. "Grab on to me."

"What're you getting at?"

"Grab on!"

"Hey, if you wanna _walk_--"

Alucard pulled Dante off the ground. At the upheavel the silver-haired half-devil flailed, firing guns willy-nilly as he squawked, "Okay, okay! I may be kind of a punk but I got my dignity!"

Dante's feet touched the ground again. He shrugged his jacket to settle the leather. Then he snapped, "Okay. Big scary clock-tower. You run and I'll follow, Bats."

"If you can keep up," challenged the vampire, his smile full of malicious confidence. Once Dante got his eyes on him he didn't blink once, even when the ashes got into them.

Bounding across lifeless rooftops, the night sped onward unheeding. It felt like hours had gone by. Then Dante could have sworn only minutes. Pan was playing with their sense of time, and it was pissing him off. He would have liked to ask if they were getting close, but even through the very modern, high-rise buildings, he could see another silhouette that was unlike the clean, straight lines of urban living. It's beaming clockface was a big hint too.

They were almost there when they heard several screams. Dante stopped to check, his sense of heroism not winning out from his desire to stop this madness. He peered over a rooftop with his boot on the edge of the cliff, wiping gray ash from his face. He saw people, the first he'd seen since the kid in the restaurant and that demon (but that last didn't really count).

Anyway, he watched the mayhem with a sick feeling in his stomach. Why sick? - it wasn't a hard question. The people below were either doing any number of things, ranging from writhing out the ground screaming, attacking each other, or doing unpleasant acts of sexual violence on one another. It was sickening. He wrinkled his nose and bumped into Alucard when he turned to continue.

"Leave them," Alucard said, giving a cursory glance to the acts below. "We can't help them by interfering. That bastard dreamweaver is responsible for their suffering. Let's go!"

Dante nodded, but he couldn't help feeling a wrench of guilt lodged into his chest that made it just a little harder to breathe as he ran along.

The great gorgeous clock called Big Ben was pretty impressive, being man-made and all, with great lights and even a place for folks to hang out above top - with special permission. There was not a single soul in sight, and he felt something very wrong with the stillness. Something felt like it happened, just moments before they arrived, and it was a sickening walking-into-aftermath feeling. Dante and Alucard peered up at Big Ben from below, before they simultaneously made the decision to run up the side of it to reach the top, rather than break inside.

Their approach triggered an event of demons, exploding from glass windows in shops along the street. Dante spun his sword from the sheath, and Rebellion's blade was ready to wet itself on more demon guts.

"You just gave me a reason to break stuff," he called graciously, moving toward the demons to see them back to their Hellish beginnings. Alucard laughed menacingly from farther back, but he was preparing to unleash his own personal brand of hell, perfected from years of experimentation and magic of the Hellsing family.

The street south of Big Ben was filled with the murderous thunder of firearms discharging at impossible frequencies. It seemed there was nothing but constant thunder in the air; where one gunshot rang, surely another one followed swiftly, stepping on its heel. Combinining their gunfire, it was hard to tell one gunshot from the other when they fired so quickly and together.

But the riotous cavorting demons were laid down in a matter of seconds, and the gunfire reports faded into the dreamworld's deepest blackest holes.

Smoking guns were all that remained. Not a scratch nor hair was harmed on Dante's head. Staggeringly, the demons fell to ashes and blew away in a gentle breeze.

"That's my special flavor of fun. Comes with unlimited warrantee." He flicked demon gore off the blade of his sword. "And, believe it or--"

A roar of anguish trickled through the walls and into the street from inside the clocktower. The boom of gears and cogs moving blew his mind away. He jerked his head back and looked up at the clock face. The glass - or plastic, or whatever the hell was covering the gears within - suddenly engulfed itself in flames. The entire building shuddered, the earth moaned beneath their feet.

Dante's ears rang as he swatted glass shards out of the air, some of them sticking into his arm. He pulled them out, wincing. "Vergil...?!"

As flames engulfed the air above, superheated metal and glass continued to rain upon them from above. Then the smoke and flickering blaze retreated back within the clock's blown-out face. Dante rushed up the wall in a dash to reach the top, not caring if Alucard was right behind or not. All he cared about was reaching Vergil (okay, so maybe he wasn't really hurrying to save him per se, but kick his ass the way he wanted to, and then hopefully make up and everything could be the way it used to be--), and stopping him from doing some more foolishness.

But it wasn't to be. The inner workings of the clock remained a mystery to him. It was a vast confusion of moving parts, cogs, noise, and light. Fire burned in the wreckage. He sniffed the air. "Vergil? Verrrrgil! Where are you, big brother?"

A huge piece of machinery fell, breaking through the fire-weakened floor. Dante hopped back a few steps and cocked his head to listen through the roaring flames. He could hear... laughing?

"Alright, Pan. Playtime's officially over. Now be a nice boy and--"

There! Through the flames! He pointed his guns and bumrushed through the flames, feeling the heat lick and sear his body, but he was a half-demon; flames touched him but didn't burn. It didn't feel nice, though - whatever. He lunged out the other side, leaping through and over wreckage, following the path of the moving figure into the night. The stones had been blown out on the other side of the wall and he looked down. He saw a extending across a river in the distance, robed in a thick, web-like fog. Down below was a big empty lot. He didn't know what the real Big Ben looked like, so he jumped down without thinking that maybe this was another clever illusion.

But there was no way to know, could he? Only way to find out was to jump. When his feet touched on solid ground anyway, he switched to his trusty demon-hacking tool of choice, Rebellion.

"I'm prepared to hazard a guess." He smirked, walking around. "In trash can number one...? Or trashcan number two?" He eyed the innocent looking trash cans - not an uncommon sight in the urban vista. He gave one of them a kick that sent it sailing through the air, into the wall. It smashed and scattered garbage across the ash-covered pavement.

"Be still, Dante Son of Sparda," a man's voice said. "There's much for you to learn before you die of heartache."

"Heartache? Tch." Dante's lip curled, and he blew his hair out of his eyes. He spun around, trying to pinpoint the speaker. It was annoying when demons had this nasty habit of talking without showing themselves, as if it was the most original act of mysterious evilness they'd done. "The whole 'talking from the shadows' thing? Totally last century, pal."

"Heh... I've discovered something about you, devilspawn. Something very interesting!" The voice traveled in a circle, irritating Dante, making him turn around and around to follow it, in case an attack came from its direction. "The melancholy of Vergil Sparda. Watch!"

"What?" Pissed off that the dream demon had spoken his brother's name without his expressed permission gave him a hernia. Snow and ash crunched under his feet as he moved toward a figure walking out from behind a vacant delivery van. One brown leather boot in front of the other, Vergil looked to be somewhat himself, with the same arrogant unsmiling stare.

"We gotta stop running into each other like this," Dante greeted, not trusting the vacant quality showing in Vergil's face. "Hey, Verg?"

On the reverse, Vergil did not remember clearly how he had ended up down here. He remembered the explosion caused by Pan's attack, and the lucid quality of the way everything seemed to fall apart and burn. The sight, the smells - the heat on his skin, tickling and teasing his memories, aroused the memory he had denied for awhile...

_Dante. You weren't the only one to watch her die. I saw it all too. _Vergil thought, drawing the Yamato from the sheath only a fraction of an inch - by feel alone, he knew the blade was whole. "Dante, you haven't changed."

"We can't change," Dante echoed, though he was sure he'd said it before somewhere. "But if you wanna do that dance again, I'll be your partner." He flicked the blade point out, mirroring his brother's stance. It was uncomfortable with a non-Asian blade, but his body was quick to adapt. "Come on. Just like old times."

Dante struck first; sparks the color of fireflies darted out from the crash, spiralling unnaturally into oblivion. Vergil blocked, parried the second attack. Not a second had gone by so far. Or maybe time was stopped and they were stuck, fighting between the passage of one dimension and the next. Strange, wasn't it, how dreams seemed to last forever and skew one's sense of relativity. This was one such a moment. It was only eight-tenths of a second gone by. Dante could count the sparks flying past his left ear.

And then of a sudden he parried Vergil's sword, his brother surprised him with an alarming defiance of the law of physics. His arm, perfectly straight, suddenly broke in two places - he could hear the resounding crack of bones as he thrust his blade fast and hard through his chest - the force of which was enough to divert his body's weight backwards, and send him barreling toward the ground with half of his blood pouring through yet another source of impalement.

Surprise blossomed throughout. Vergil, for having won so quickly; Dante, for being twice impaled on the same damn day (or was it the next day already? Was it the next decade? Who frickin' knew--)

Vergil sheathed his sword with his unbroken arm. The other dangled at his side helplessly. Dante lay sprawled in the wet snowy ashes, giving his brother a cracked smile. "What are you doing."

"You're so pathetic," Vergil told him. "You can't protect anything... with eyes like that."

_Wha-- _Vergil's smile was just as much of a shock to Dante as was the blossom of red exploding between his eyes. His throat closed off and he made a strangled noise of shock; no one could peg a bullet between Vergil Sparda's eyes. Dante had one bitch of a time doing that miracle. His pain was nothing, immeasurable, compared next to his horror. His thoughts flew apart like a startled flock of crows, screaming _NonononoI don't wanna watch this again, not again, not my Vergil--_

Alucard's laughter pierced the night, accompanying words: "I think he's right, you know. You, foolishly engaging the enemy alone."

Dante stood up slowly, grimacing at Alucard as the vampire gracefully crossed to his right. The Vergil Illusion vanished, melting away in a breeze. Dante's heart crawled back down his throat and hid between his lungs. "Damn it... I'm so fucking tired of this!!" He threw his head back to scream defiantly at...anyone. Anything.

"So what the hell happened to you?" he asked at last, his voice raw. "What held you up back there?"

For the first time, he saw the sheer cold walls of the Alucard monster crack just a little. His eyes shook, with the rest of him, with some unpopular memory. "I don't know... but he is playing tricks with our minds. You shouldn't ask too many questions. None of this dream matters."

The pair in red stood trembling. "Vergil's here, damn it," Dante whispered. "I can... I can almost feel him. He's... to me, it's like a limb. It's a twin thing. When we're apart, it's almost painful. I hate that feeling. It doesn't go away, ever."

"Use that feeling then to find him. It can help us now. I want to wake up and kill the insufferable bastard that's doing this."

"Hey. I'm the devil hunter, not you." Dante stole the moment with a smile.

"Then start hunting your brother. The only way we can get out is if we find him. You two half-devils together a fine whole devil make, yes?" Alucard smiled fangedly, pulling his hat down across his eyes. He walked past him, toward the glittering stretch of the river, staring at the sky. "Allow me to tell you a bit of advice..."

"Yeah?" Dante rubbed his chest where he had almost been stabbed. He couldn't begin to guess what was illusion, what was even real anymore. He felt his mind beginning to step toward giving up the violence of merely existing. He couldn't conjure the will to go much further. Wasn't it easier to give up...? "What's your advice?"

"When you find your brother... you must tell him one thing true about how you feel. Forgive my cliche, but here, the truth always sets you free. Whatever you want to do to him, to pay him back for whatever he's done, don't do it. Give it a chance and you'll find that your savior is..." He chuckled. "Right in front of you."

"What exactly you saying, old man?" the half-devil snorted, pretty sure he was sick of riddles and bullshit. The ache was all he understood... inside, creeping around, burrowing into his heart. He didn't want... to rot away in this place.

"I'm saying, trust Vergil to do what's really in that devil's heart. Understand?" Alucard glared over his shoulder, a shadow cast over his face. Eyes like stop lights focused on him. Dante reached up to touch the red amulet at his chest and gave a sigh.


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's notes:** I really don't know how it happened. But this fic just jumped from TEEN to **MATURE**. **THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS VERY STICKY SITUATIONS NOT SUITABLE FOR LITTLE CHILLUNS. GO AWAY NOW, Chilluns. Shoo! Shoo!! **Don't make me get the broom! Erm... and also, this contains twincest... and you know who must be involved. Yes. Dante and Vergil. It also contains some torture. Wow, this is beginning to sound like a PWP... but trust me, it has a purpose. I really did try to keep it.. tasteful? But I guess with me, it's impossible. For those of you who didn't see this coming, I don't know if I should have to apologize. But this is my story, and I'm writing it, so I won't.

**Chapter 7: THE MELANCHOLY OF VERGIL SPARDA**

- The Boy Who Never Cried

When Vergil was twelve years old (or something around that age. Vergil didn't really know anymore; when had he celebrated his last birthday?), there was a rare and beautiful wood that tumbled from the mountain behind his house as if the trees, ferns, and a vein of water had erupted from its peak. For weeks at a time in the heat of summer, he clambered over the stones, boulders, hills and the stream. The staple of those old times were that he was never, ever without his twin and his permenant shadow. They were together, constantly at odds, hating each other's guts but never for too long. They had been buddies; they shared everything together. The woods were theirs, and they felt no pressure from their mother to compete. They urged each other to jump longer, climb higher, run faster, all in the name of their adventure which they called, perhaps prudently, The Big Adventure.

It was pretty cheesy. They cracked jokes they heard in school; Vergil less than Dante. They shared a lunch their mother packed for them and laid under the hot summer sun, letting the rays dry their wet, tanned bodies after a hard swim in the small watering hole that the brook fed into. They called the brook the Snake, because it wound its way around rocks and they imagined that the watering hole was the snake's head. Vergil tried to remember if it had a real name, not a kid's made-up name. It was beautiful, sparkling on its path, infusing the Sparda twins with merriment, curiousity, energy. The Snake was always full of fresh, clean water. The boys made a point of not urinating in it, no matter how tempted they were. After all, the water fed into their watering hole... and that's all the reasoning they needed.

Once in awhile, if the weather promised fair, they'd take backpacks up the beaten trail and stay out in the night. It was perfectly clear, and the wildflowers and spruce trees gave off a special scent that only barely blew in to their bedroom windows at night. It was as if anything during the day was only truly free to live in the night. In the dark, in the wild, with eyes that could see in the dark unlike other children's eyes, they pitched camp under the stars near the base of the mountain. It was a trip they always loved; it terrified their mother to death, but their urge to explore and devestate their surroundings often left much to be wanted in the way of two un-housebroken half-demons.

When they were thirteen-and-a-half, they set out on their nightly sleepover once again during the second week of summer, prepared to expand their horizons and explore farther than they had before, possessed of a desire for something they couldn't name, couldn't put a title to. What that was, where they explored, or how they expressed that desire they couldn't understand, was quick to be discovered.

"Vergil, I got one!" Dante shouted, grabbing the weasel by the scruff of its neck. Its fur was thick and bristled, and the animal smelled like piss. The brothers were not tired in the least; the night invigorated, diffusing a restless hunger in their bodies. Dante used his hunger to explore and capture.

"Dante, put it down. Look, it's gonna piss all over you; mother's going to--" Vergil stared at it as if he had never seen anything so ridiculous in his life. He didn't think much of Dante just stealing animals and letting them go. He didn't even know how Dante managed to catch a weasel at its meal in the first place.

"It won't bite."

"You've only got one change of clothes; and I said piss, not bite."

"Look, Verge. It wants to tell you how much he likes you." Dante shoved the smelly beast under Vergil's nose. He cried out and punched Dante in the arm. "Aw. You're no fun." He let it go. Just a flash of dark, matted fur, and the creature fled. Dante wiped his hands on his worn jeans before poising his muscled legs, trained from days in the woods, and taking Vergil in the chest with his shoulder.

They tumbled through the underbrush, bruising themselves on rocks and sticks, hard pine cones jabbing them in the skin. They came out underneath the canopy of night, wrestling with growls, grunts, cries of pain and laughter. In their rush to beat each other, to fill that void, to sate their hunger, their nature to fight and compete blossomed. Dante jammed his elbow into Vergil's stomach, knocking his breath out. Countering with a knee to the inside of Dante's thigh, Vergil licked sweat from his lip before he drove himself down hard on his brother's body and successfully squished the air out of him, and the fight as well.

Panting from exertions, they laid still for awhile. Vergil had no ambition to do anything else to his brother; he merely closed his eyes and laid his head on his shoulder, hearing their hearts. His own heartbeat couldn't drown out his brother's breathing, rapidly decreasing and growing still. Vergil remembered how good that felt, that exhausted feeling, that content drain of energy. It did no good to exert himself alone. He liked the press of Dante's fingertips on his arm as he pinched him.

"_Come on_, get off me."

"Two more minutes."

"O-_kay_." Dante's hand brushed through Vergil's hair, making it stick up with his slick sweat. Back then it was really short, but Dante grew his out a little more and it was a constant source of agitation for Vergil, who thought he looked like a mop rather than a brother. The trembling hand in his hair stayed.

"Hey, um. Verge?"

"Don't call me that. I hate that."

"Sorry."

"I want to tell you something..." Underneath his chest, he felt Dante's heart thud particularly hard. Whatever it was, it was pretty serious. Vergil shrugged, nuzzled against his shoulder, then slowly sat up and stared at him. He couldn't see color at night, but he could see very well in shapes. It was nice to know he could see his brother in the dark. It was the only way he could really look, deeply and seriously, and find out what was on his mind. No one would see them sharing this stare, communicating... god knows what.

"Out with it," Vergil grinned, squirming. Dante blushed, lifting his arms above his head and laying them flat, poised in reckless relaxation. His neck got tired, so he couldn't keep staring at him while Dante agonized over what he wanted to say.

Finally: "I got a rock in my butt."

"That's nice." Annoyed, Vergil rolled off of him and sat up on his hands and knees to look around and see where they were. "Next time, just kick me off."

An owl cried in the distance, answered by a coyote. Dante slowly moved to his knees, and then grabbed Vergil's belt, wrenching him to the ground so he could smother him, lips at his ear. "Not truce yet, big bro." His rough dirt-stained palms shoved against his hips, locking him into place between two roots. Vergil swallowed a squawk of indignation and merely cocked his elbow for a good solid punch. He missed by a hair as Dante ducked, then the younger of the twins celebrated his newly won domination by thrusting his hips down on top of the other boy.

"Ah! HEY!" Vergil snarled, feeling a peculiar tickle in his loins, and struggled, bucking underneath his captor. "You... you prick, get off!! This isn't funny!!"

His demands were not met with action but laughter. He swallowed his complaints and gave another hard thrust, then fell back exhausted, gazing forlornly at the stars through the branches of the tree above them.

"You haven't won yet," he swore, glaring back at Dante - then stared. Dante's eyes, even in this blackness, were red. And they were staring at him, with an intensity Vergil almost convinced himself of disliking. "Dante?"

He pressed his hand against the tree root currently squeezing against his left side, trying to push himself up, but still Dante sat on top of him and wouldn't let up. "Do that again," Dante said, his legs splayed as he straddled his thighs. He scooted himself up, so that Vergil couldn't see his pants buttons anymore.

The first retort Vergil had in mind was, "Are you fucking gay? This is nuts! Get off me!" But the way his brother looked at him scared him into doing something. With a pathetic little jerk, he lifted his hips and pushed up. His half-hard, thirteen year old dick was crushed up against his brother's ass. It was terrifyingly surreal. He saw Dante's mouth move; then his brother leaned close over him, licking a bead of sweat from his temple. Vergil shut his eyes and breathed in deep - which was a mistake. He got a noseful of Dante, and the relucant boner he sported suddenly became painfully full-blown.

_What's... wrong with me?_ he thought madly. Dante started moving, sliding his hand over the front of Vergil's shirt, and lifting it up. It was almost a relief. Despite the night chill, he was burning from the roots of his hair down to his toes. _I'm... burning. I'm on fire. What the hell is this?!_

Without a word he raised his arms and leaned forward so his shirt could be pulled off, for relief against the prickling heat creeping over his skin. The shirt was still damp from swimming in it, from sweating so much, and now, it was gone. The bark felt hard and prickly on his naked back. He leaned back, and pulled Dante's head down to his chest, where he felt something wet, hard, and raspy against his skin; Vergil fought him suddenly, striking at his shoulders, and almost knocking Dante off for good this time, but then his eyes went huge and his limbs went slack. He felt teeth on his nipple, which grew hard at once. He gave an unsteady whimper, scared of what he was feeling and what Dante was trying to do.

For several minutes, he nursed his aching pride as Dante suckled him like a kitten, his hair falling thick over his eyes. He was so hard and his jeans were causing all kinds of unwanted friction. Unbidden shameful tears leaked past his eyelashes. Somehow speaking seemed an unspeakable act of sin.

And just when he was becoming bored with the nipple play, Dante stopped and leaned back, sporting a bulge in his own jeans. He rubbed it agitatedly with his palm so it wasn't so uncomfortable. His face was curiously vacant, the kind of heartbreaker stare that guys on girl's posters had. The kind that could make a human heart shatter into a million pieces. But Vergil's was no human heart. He wanted to slug that look off his brother's face.

"I feel hot," Dante complained. Finally something normal. He wiped his face and his speech was thick. "Vergil, I kinda wanna sleep now."

"I don't think so."

"What?"

Vergil stole into his energy reserves for one last rebellion, and knocked Dante over long enough to grab him by the jeans and pull him between his legs, promptly taking absolute control. He popped the first button on Dante's pants open and ripped open the rest with ease. He felt the curve of aching flesh inside his boxers, thrust his hand in them, cupping it and caressing it. Dante hadn't made a move to stop him, as if he felt he deserved it for causing Vergil's previous indignation.

Seconds of those caresses elapsed, and Dante made a soft noise like he was in pain. He bit his lip and turned his head away. "Oh...god..."

Just a few weeks ago, Dante and Vergil told each other they'd begun to masturbate when the urge took them. At night, in bed, or in the shower, uncontrollable as the rising of the traitor moon. They were curious about the new thing, and discussed in lewd terms the whole idea of whether or not they did it with the same hand, or what the hell got them thinking about doing it, what kind of chicks they thought about. After awhile it occured to them that it was strange for two brothers to talk about their growing hormonal issue, even if they were twins and shared practically everything - including their tooth brush. So they stopped, and never brought it up again.

Dante breathed another moan, and his hands clenched and pulled at the dirt. His lips were wet and Vergil, collecting his courage, leaned forward and kissed them. He felt Dante stir in his hand and he wanted more, leaving wet kisses against his face, his jaw, his neck. Dante started to moan, his hand retreating between his legs with Vergil's. "Don't stop. Don't stop... _Oh, fuck_..." His lips flickered against his ear when he spoke.

At length, Vergil worked his own jeans open, and breathed a small sigh for the relief it gave him. He wanted him so much, half of his brain screaming in outrage, the other filled with the thought of Dante, Dante underneath him, on top of him, _inside_ him, _around him_--

"Vergil!"

His body arched, and he made a sound that ought to have come from an animal, not a human, not Dante. He clutched at Vergil, pulling him down, bucking and striving to get closer, as it to share some great, dark secret. Instead, his erection spurted thick, white sticky spots on his naked belly and he arched his hips as if to squeeze out more.

Vergil's unthinking half of his brain made him slide down on all fours and lick the mess clean. His taste lingered and not in a bad way, though he could have done with a glass of water at that point. He was thirsty; and then he laughed out loud.

"What's so damn funny?" Dante said, injured in ways he couldn't fix with soap and water. He hurriedly buttoned his pants, shoving Vergil back with the heel of his boot. "Get the hell away! Ugh!"

"You're the one who started it." Vergil stared disappointedly at the ground; the ache, the heat, all gone within just a few heated moments.

"I didn't know..." He breathed deeply, and the night air rejuvenated him enough to continue. "...I didn't know I felt that way..."

"Yeah? Well, don't you dare tell mother. I'll kill you."

"Duh." Dante's panic returned, and he stood up, pacing in one place. "What are we gonna do?" He rubbed his arms. He didn't want that to happen again, Vergil knew. He realized Dante was just as terrified of what just happened. What if they wanted to do it again? Vergil sensed his brother thinking, and almost wanted it to.

"We'll just have to make sure we're not around each other."

"We're big boys, we can control ourselves."

"Well, _one_ of us can."

"Asshole!" Dante glowered, walking toward the sound of the stream. "I need to clean off. Um, your shirt's over there."

"Yeah." Vergil grabbed it, and shut his eyes. When he couldn't hear Dante, he slipped it on clumsily and pieced apart his emotional bubble and started to cry, burying his face in the leafy fronds of the ferns. He couln't bear this feeling, this... _desire_. He hated the way he felt, and he imagined he was some kind of sick pervert for doing anything like what he'd just done. He wanted it to stop, terrified that it wouldn't. He felt the same about his hatred when Mother treated Dante differently than she treated Vergil. He was jealous of Dante and his bright, cheerful safe, and Vergil could not help envy that way he manipulated everyone to do just as he wanted. Especially their mother. Vergil had no such talents; he was broody, shy, and often alone. Vergil was nothing and could amount to nothing, if it weren't for Dante. In fact, the only friends Vergil had were also friends of Dante's. They truly shared their existence, while Vergil lived vicariously through his more outgoing twin.

This couldn't go on, surely. He had to break away. This place where they could just be who they were, without eyes watching, had suddenly become poisoned as well. He had to finally, truly break free of that imprisonment before these feelings of need began to destroy him without.

Dante came back a few minutes later. Vergil had walked back to camp at that point, crawled into his sleeping bag. He tried to shut his eyes, but the sound of cracking twigs brought him wide awake. He imagined Dante thumping his butt down onto the ground, pulling his boots off, and sliding his body into his sleeping bag, and flopping like a fish onto his back. He slept like a kid - he WAS a kid - and years later, never broke out of the habit of fidgeting until he found the most comfortable place. Dante was Dante.

Even if Vergil's feelings for him rapidly changed, Dante would stay the same. And while Dante continued to grow and be that same, smiling, mouthy brat, Vergil would grow stronger. It was time to get away from him. He shut his eyes, listening to his breathing, until it lulled him to dreams.

* * *

"It's amazing, the things you can remember, isn't it, son of Sparda?" the demon purred in his ear.

Vergil opened his eyes again and stared directly down, and noticed with a certain level of apathy - he was beyond childish fear and unbidden desires now - the pool of blood swirling down an eternal drain. With demons, there was no such thing as chastity and he was also annoyed to discover that he was naked, suspended above the swirling blood, his wrists, legs and torso tightly bound in thick barbed vines. Thorns sank hungrily into his skin like fangs, and through them he felt a seeping liquid, which dribbled from the holes in his arms.

"Your greatest weakness has ever been the little twin you call Dante," the demon continued, stroking his open wounds. "Even at the end at Temen ni Gru, you could not take his power... you were never strong enough. Not to protect anything."

Dante's wounded eyes haunted Vergil at that moment. He clenched his teeth. "I care nothing for him."

"You wept in his sleeping arms when no one was looking. You begged him not to die, did you not?"

"I ...I did not..." He had long since comforted the idea that no one would know - but he was wrong. Demons had an annoying way of being omniscient - or at least poking their slimy claws into people's memories.

"You can't protect him now, can you?" With this conclusion, Pan laughed and moved slowly to where Vergil could see him. He looked still the same, in that ridiculous purple suit, but his eyes burned with brilliant power. He seemed to stand on thin air above the swirling red mass far below, hands clasped behind his back. "Look at you. Pathetic worm. And yet you seem to be _enjoying_ this. Is there a deep vein of masochism in you after all?"

Vergil stared at Pan, giving him no further physical hints of his shameless pleasure. Perhaps there was that vein - but then Dante had it too. "If you're waiting for Dante and that vampire to arrive, you'd better not hold your breath." He felt the vines tightening ever so slowly. It became a challenge to breath, spots rising before his eyes, blood in his mouth. "You... better... prepare for disappointment."

"Pesky brotherly love getting in the way again! Most assuredly, he will come... and it will be your souls that will give me what I need to rule this Earth with nightmares." He smiled a beautiful, handsome smile and leaned close to gently massage an open wound, then licked the blood from it directly. Vergil boiled with hatred; his eyes squeezed shut. Pain equated with pleasure was one of his other dirty little secrets. He couldn't stand the way Pan abused this knowledge. He thought about Dante, and the power he wielded. It would only be a matter of time before he showed.

A hot, wet tongue forced its way into a particularly deep opening previously worried at by a particularly large thorn, in his left bicep. He felt his own horror replaced with grief; he wanted every inch of his body treated this way, if only to replace the pain in his heart and mind with physical abuse. To replace everything. He struggled again, and each thorn digging into his body struck deeper, filling him with a mindblowing agony. He wasn't sure whether he was groaning from loss of blood or loss of shame.

"You like it?" Pan smiled. "Tell me what you want. Pan provides for the pretty ones."

Vergil kept his mouth shut. His orgasm was close; he could get off on pain alone and it was insufferably apparent he was going to come if anything particularly agonizing happened. If he so much as breathed hard...

Pan's lips curved into that gorgeous, academy award-winning smile. Then he bent down on his knees, and suckled wounds at his thighs with that sumptuous mouth, taking great care to avoid the source of his problems. Cold lips countered with a scalding tongue sent him into a confusion of sensations, all of course orchestrated to bring him even closer. He was panting heavily now, unable to help the urge for air. Vergil's voice was still caged in his throat but threatened to burst, each atom of his body bending toward this ungodly pain, endless wanting. He realized there were more ways than one to torture a half-demon.

He retreated at this point, as far back as he could go, observing his situation with a cold, judgmental scrutiny, cutting off the emotions he so loathed. He shut his eyes, pursing his lips, breathing only through his nose. _Dante... Dante, please... hurry..._

* * *

The night sprawl of the city seemed more and more surreal. Bodies in the streets, lifeless, as if they'd suddenly stopped to breath their last. Alucard felt sickness everywhere. He had to wake up, and he was quite put out with this entire business. While Dante was looking for his brother in this shared nightmare, Alucard would loose his power and see how demons liked the taste of a nosferatu's power. If that was what it took, perhaps Pan the dream demon would find it more to his advantage to surrender before his world came shattering down around his ears.

He found a high point where he could look over the fake London, with its bodies and suffering and falling ash. The words were not important; it was his power that he called from the recesses of his existence. It was his souls, the ones he jealously hoarded. When called, they proved a most devestating force not to be lightly reckoned with. His eyes sparkled with a mischief only real devils make. He spread out his arms, and called deep within. His spirit was a black hole, devourer of souls and blood; he was not a man but a monster, bred by greed as a mortal and now molded into perfection. No one could stand up to his minions, numberless, beyond counting. He thrust back his head and laughed mockingly.

"_See? _Look! Your doom calls you!"

His confidence was surely not misplaced. He was not afraid; he was enthralled beyond description. He would not hold back so long as his enemy was deemed worthy. Thus far, of the demon he had seen no trace. Only indications of his existence. But he was here, and he was hiding like a coward. But no matter! From his vantage point, a great, enormous black cloud rose. It took on seperate shapes, splitting off from the main mass and becoming more, and more. The cloud of black swallowed Alucard and the building he was standing on top of, and blinked with thousands of hungry red eyes.

_Find him_, he commanded. _Find the little bastard and show him to me. _As an after thought, he added, _There is a boy who should be sleeping in a restaurant. Leave him alone._

Unhindered, the masses of people - from over generations of warfare and countries - flooded the streets. His menagerie of souls all silently obeyed. It was as if a dam of people had broken and bodies rushed to fill and search every building, every nook and cranny of the fake London. Alucard, unrecognizable in gleaming armor and armed with an antiquated blade, searched alongside his minions.

Within minutes, the search came up fruitful. The minions dumped their prize before their lord. It was a young girl wrapped tightly into a blanket. Girl because she was squealing and crying like a piglet. The blanket was old and tattered, stained with blood, and the stink of fear clung to her like a perfume. The blanketed girl rolled around on the ground, then found the fetal position and stuck herself that way.

"Are you idiots?" Alucard asked, his eyes narrowing with disgust.

"Demon," the minions insisted, and made motions to the blanket. "Demon!"

When he rolled her over and cut the blanket off with one sword stroke, she looked up, her bobbed hair falling over brilliantly orange eyes and a tear-stained face. "Please don't kill me I didn't mean it I didn't know what was happening please don't please don't kill me!!"

Alucard was looking at a demon... but only a quarter-demon, whose blood had been thinned by her mortal heritage. She quivered under his scrutiny. "I-I'm Vivian. I don't know who you are, or where I am... but I'm fairly scared and I want Vergil!! Where is Vergil!? Do you know where he is?"


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Notes**: The last chapter was really unnecessary. Basic, obligatory fanservice (directed at myself; I simply couldn't live more than six chapters without smut in there somewhere, no matter how bloody inappropriate or tasteless it turns out to be. This is a flaw I must overcome! TT) I also really_, really_ want to have Alucard say "You allowed that dream demon to come into my world, and fuck my shit up" but I've changed it. Woe.

* * *

**(This is Chapter 8) - Worthless**

The pathetic girl cowered before the blithely bemused badass nosferatu. In light of recent, serious events threatening the very existence of mankind, Alucard least expected to be confronted with the idyllic face of innocence - such as the one staring up at him with unfaltering terror. No surprise there - he was rapidly losing his interest in searching for Pan, and in this world, it sapped his power with remarkable ease simply standing here wasting time.

"Who the hell are you?" he demanded, raising the broadword of his Turkish forefathers. It glistened, stained with the blood of lesser demons (only worthy of becoming dog-shit, as his minion Baskerville proved).

"Vi-Vivian," she stammered. "I th-think I told you that before. Wait! Please don't kill me! I-I think I can help you!"

"You said Vergil - isn't he that other one's brother?"

"Y-Yes!"

"I thought I recognized your ridiculous little face. You allowed that dream demon to come into my world, and upset my Master. Now you will perish on my sword like the flea you are." The sword went up again. This time he fully intended to lop her body clean in half. However, something in her tears tugged at his almost non-existent heartstrings.

"Please!" she sobbed, crawling toward him. She clung to his free hand. "Please! I didn't know! I thought the Voice was my friend... but it wasn't. It was my grandfather's voice. I know that now!"

"And what did he promise you?" he leered, pinning his words with intuition. "What lies did he fill your thick skull with, fool?!"

"He promised--" Her tears abated, and her voice deepened, probably imitating the voice Alucard came to realize was her grandfather Pan's, " 'Follow the one called Vergil and call him master; then you will be worthy of becoming a true, full-blooded demon. It is within my power, granddaughter.' And I did... only..." She hiccuped, wiping her face on her sleeve. "He lied to me... just like everyone else in Hell. All lies!"

Alucard felt no pity for her plight. Her own stupidity won her this place in the nightmare. A lowly piece of filth, a puppet on strings. And yet... was he no different, hiding self-loathing with a cold shell of pride? "So you are still partially a demon. That explains why they brought you to me."

"You're the vampire," she said. "The one in the coffin. So you survived here. Alucard, isn't it?"

His eyes gleamed with impatience.

"Take me with you! I... I can help you."

"You'll get in my way as soon as die by your own stupidity." He swung the sword just over her head and turned away. "Get out of my sight. You're just as responsible as your grandfather--"

She jumped at his words. "So I have to fix it! Please, Mr. Alucard!" She stood up, shedding her blanket. She was shamelessly naked as usual, but her voice was filled with an earnest squeal that was like a child's. "I want to prove that I don't need no grandfather's help being useful or worth something. Isn't that what you would do?"

The nosferatu's heartstrings thrummed yet again. Pure chance, surely! But he couldn't let her pleas go unheard. He looked over his shoulder and smiled unkindly. "Show me your power, little girl. If you can wake me up from this nightmare, and help me find the demon's body in the real world, we can kill him. _Together_." He promised this last with figurative fingers crossed. He truly cared nothing for her. Whatever happened to her was not his responsibility.

The beaming smile on her face was a small consolation. He rallied his willpower not to kill her when she suddenly threw her arms around his neck, nude little self pressed up against all the nosferatu's body as if she knew just how much it irritated him. But it was not just bold insanity on her part. Her eyes flew open as she tapped deeply into the tainted flow of power within her - inherited from her notorious ancestor.

Alucard felt a rush of invigorating cold all over his body. The world melted away like grains of sand from a deeply elaborate sand-painting crafted by very mad perfectionists; one moment the world felt and looked very real to the last grain, and then it was gone, washed away, all that hard work - devoured in one hard wind. The only thing real was the girl's naked form pressed against him with her power flaring and dancing around them. "Wake up!" she whimpered, blood seeping from between her lips. "...wake up..."

The nosferatu and quarter-demon disappeared from the world of nightmares, erased from its map. Alucard lost focus of where he was, and was last aware of opening his eyes and feeling a crushing weight on top of him. With a short-tempered snarl, he threw the naked girl from on top of him. His coffin was open beside him and filled with water - a devestating blow to his mood - and Integra was nowhere to be found. A young man was laying on the floor some feet away, face-down, his hair spiked upward and his coat a brilliant silk the color of blue skies.

Vivian squeaked and pounced on Vergil, rolling him over. She slapped his face, but she had no power to wake him here. "Master!" she whimpered, cradling his head on her thighs.

Alucard loomed over her. "Leave him be. The faster we find Pan..." Alucard stopped and looked toward his left. Seras Victoria lay on the ground as well, unconscious.

_My Master_, Alucard called in his mind, ignoring Vivian's look of confusion. _Master... can you hear me? Are you afraid?_

There was a long silence. Then she replied in his thoughts, exhibiting great effort to keep her emotional slate clean. _I'm in the library. Come quickly!_

"Yes, my Master," Alucard said aloud, proud of his beloved Integra Hellsing for keeping herself brave - even in the face of all this madness. "And you, girl. Stay here until I call. If Integra sees that you are alive, she may well order me to kill you-" He laughed at her fear as he walked through a wall. "-and that is an order not lightly ignored."

The library was dark and he saw her movement as she looked up from reading. He smelled her blood. Alarm buzzed in his wrangled nerves; he rushed to her, but it was only minor wounds. Scratches, actually, of her own doing with a clean, bright knife.

"I found these. So I don't fall asleep," she explained shakily, a book open beside her. She was probably referring to the sigils of protection, cut into her skin, and the numerous objects littering the table that had one use or another for fighting evil. Five cigars smoked to the last inch were stubbed out in an ashtray and the thick smoke hovered around her. He touched her hair and she unexpectedly sank her face into her hands. "Oh, God... I..."

"Don't," he hissed. "I was awakened by chance and now I want only to hear you command me. I know how to end this nightmare for you, Master. Integra." Her name was like a soft, passionate kiss, and she relaxed slowly, releasing the deathgrip she'd developed on his sleeve.

"Do whatever you must to see this to an end," she ordered quietly, lifting her feverish eyes to his own. She stood up, her hand flying forward to grab his jaw and hold onto it. "That is an order!" She pushed him back a step. He wanted to ask her if she would be alright alone; the touch was a little unnecessary. He slowly removed his hat, inclining his body toward her.

"Yes, my Master."

* * *

Alucard drained five blood packs to replenish himself while Vivian dressed herself. Once Vivian had finished tying her shoes and pinning up a pair of Integra's pants, they could set off.

"I can feel him," Vivian said, and all the innocence in her had suddenly been blown out. She knew serious business was at hand, and she put on a new face for the work to be done. "It's a part of us demons who can feel each other. It's what makes Dante such a special devil hunter. Imagine being able to tell human from demon by just looking at them."

"Where is he?" He cocked his guns, his lips pulled back with malicious glee. He made a terrifying sight, orange shades flashing, painted red and black for the bloodshed tonight.

"A... A tower? A big clocktower."

"Are you certain?" Did his location in the real world coincide with his location in the dream he had crafted? That would be too easy... but that was how it was. And if Vivian was lying...

"Don't even think that!" She squeaked as he looked at her, almost through her. "I'm pretty sure," she said, squinting. "Do you know what place that could be?" She yipped like a puppy when Alucard picked her up with one arm and started to fly off. Terrifying flight in the arms of an enormous black bat ensued; from on high, she witnessed the absolute carnage overtaking Alucard's beautiful city. It filled her with revulsion that she had had such a part for her grandfather's blackhearted ambitions.

"Don't let go," she whimpered, clinging to her unwitting companion. This was all for Vergil, after all. She told herself that she wasn't just greedy for power like the others. She wanted Vergil to see her as more than a tool, more than some stupid girl. It gave her a tiny spark of warmth when he looked at her, even if his eyes were filled with caustic disdain, almost hatred. She cried a little, but blamed it on the cold wind in her eyes. _Pull yourself together, woman_, she sternly thought. _Don't be a moron. Vergil hates cry-babies._

The tower rapidly became life-size as Alucard closed in. "Ready, girl?" he laughed, and just a half-second later, with the building becoming less like a box with tiles for the roof with a comically brightly lit clockface, he flung her through an open window; she just barely escaped banging her head off of the window lintel on the way in. She rolled across the floor, bruising both elbows and knees before coming to an ungraceful stop, heaped against an end table. She froze at once with the notion that her grandfather was probably in here. Surely he'd have noticed her with Alucard and knew that they had come to kill him. Moments of silence passed, feeding her sudden infuriation. She couldn't feel her grandfather in the room; he wasn't even on the same floor!

She shrieked in outrage. Was he leaving her out of the fight because he actually cared or because he meant what he said about her getting in the way? She thrust her hair back from her eyes angrily and ignored the throbbing pain in her joints from the fall. Instead, she ran for the nearest set of stairs she could find. She desperately wished her limbs would move faster like they used to. But she was tired, and couldn't move fast, like the way Vergil could seem to disappear, leaving only after-images of body and sword. But she moved at a mortal's infuriating pace; even worse, she was getting tired before she even reached her destination. She leapt up one staircase, then another, trying to hold out until she arrived at the fight.

* * *

After depositing the worthless child out of harm's way, Alucard descended on the rooftop of the tower. The night sky was brilliant and better yet, the moon was out and it was a real, bloated, massive moon that monopolized its position in the visible universe.

The silhouette of his adversary solidified opposite him. The man's voice called from across the distance, echoing from the distance. "You've arrived. I knew you had awoken once your massive presence left the dreamworld."

Alucard couldn't see his face, but he could see his eyes were a brillant shade of red bordering on fiery orange. This was an adversary, he thought, worthy of getting excited about. He reached into his jacket for his weapons.

"Wait." The man held up his hands. "Don't you want to hear my story?"

"I am not particularly interested in story-time. Leave that for your grand-daughter. By the way," Alucard answered back, "shouldn't you two return from whence you came? You can bounce her on your knee and tell her that story."

"You've got a lot to say for such a petty creature," the demon said. "But you are too full of your own misery to realize the bigger picture. This world was meant to be damned the moment the first mortal child walked on its tender green shores. We monsters came in many primitive forms, but they - mankind - filled the world with money and machines to take care of them. Hell is the smoky retreat where we languished, waiting for the day to reclaim our right as earth's masters. You are not alone, Dracula." He pointed to the stars. "Feel that? Feel how the heavens tremble! They tremble for you, and your rise to freedom."

Alucard lowered his guns only a fraction.

Pan began walking toward him carefully, his footsteps clicking on the tiles. "When you were enslaved, logic and science was the weapon men wielded against the monsters of old. But it was OUR magic that made you their servant, our sacred rites stolen and used against us. Our names stripped away, our livelihoods destroyed..." Pan let the bitterness seep into his voice, making it crack. "I can't imagine that you would let this travesty continue. You agree that mankind must surely pay for their crimes - and this is the judgment day?"

The vampire looked pensive for a moment, his lips curving into a seductive yet thoughtful frown. Pan stopped roughly ten steps from him, his pleas emptying, and waiting for a response. When a minute passed, Alucard reached his conclusion. "It is unfortunate," he said, "that the magic of which you speak has limited your chances of survival to almost nothing. My Master has ordered me to do what I must to make this nightmare end. That is to kill you where you stand. I have respect for all that you've accomplished so far, demon. But here is where it ends. Truly sorry." Alucard inclined his head, smiling wickedly.

The twin muzzles rained thunder on Pan's ears, and suddenly he knew pain and what it could be. He leapt away, and stripped the handsome man's body in favor of releasing his true form. He grew to almost quadruple his size, sporting tattered shreds of wings; he had the lower body of a goat, enormous hooves cracked and stained with blood. Curling ram horns rose from his temples and his face elongated to that of a massacred animal's skull. Hellfire engulfed his entire body, and glowed most prominently from his eyes. The building's foundations shuddered with a roar from within the very depths of the Hell itself (maybe not far from the truth). The demon stomped the roof and dislodged dozens of tiles, scattering them on the ground below.

Alucard was engulfed in a cloud of smoke rising from the roof. His body became a blur as he leapt clear, guns blazing, filling the demon's body with hundreds of bullet-holes to almost no effect at all. Since the demon took up over half of the space along the roof, Alucard was forced to balance attack with manuevering; it was impossible to avoid the sudden fist flying toward him, raking across his body, sending him crashing to the roof again. He rolled just before one of those massive hooves could squish him into a stain.

"Dance!" the vulgar demon's voice roared, ringing in his ears. "Dance once more, since this is all your life amounts to!" He leapt off the roof, straight at Alucard, sweeping him up in a storm of flames awakened by the demon's swirling, beating wings.

From a window below, Vivian's small face appeared. She threw the window open just as she saw her grandfather flying away, the body of Alucard trapped in his grasp. The stars had disappeared in a cloud of black, charring smoke lit by the moon. The smell of burning flesh and brimstone suffocated the air; she watched as Alucard sank his fangs into the demon's hand that grasped him, his eyes swimming with crimson. Did he actually look afraid? Vivian's mind raced; she had but few gifts bestowed upon her. One of which was fast reflexes. So, reflexively, she took a daring leap of faith; her heart in her throat, her skin sizzling with the heat of the demon's body. She latched onto the whipping demon tail and held on for dear life. As terrifying as flying with Alucard had been, this flight was pain and horror, her hands streaming blood.

Bullets whizzed past her as Alucard fired again and again; then of a sudden the bullets ceased altogether. She dared to look up to see what had happened to him. Had he... been crushed to death!?

She buried her face in her arm. They were away from the town now; it was nothing but open fields around them. Minutes passed, and her head became cloudy and thoughts unclear. It was so hard to breathe...

* * *

An open field rushed up at them. His skin was burning; when Alucard's guns ran out of ammo, he transformed into mist, a cloud of vapor that quickly became a mass of screaming bats, leading the enraged demon on a chase. When Alucard finally turned to face his enemy, he saw that something was stuck to his tail. And, as if realizing it was there as soon as he looked, the demon whipped it off to the ground. Alucard fixed his gaze back to the monster, wiping his mouth slowly, his abnormally long tongue sliding out through his teeth. Rather than being scared for his immortal life, he began laughing - and the harder he laughed, the more perplexed his enemy became.

"Are you not afraid?!" Fire rained down around him, searing the earth. The flames licked Alucard's boots; he could smell himself burning, but he no longer cared. He would heal, he always healed.

"Haven't you realized?" Alucard opened his arms, releasing his power like a flood. "I cannot be destroyed so easily."

"But you _can_ be undone." The demon made a move toward him. Alucard sidestepped, filling his guns with bullets anew, and fired at the exposed underarm of his enemy. The demon shrieked with his agony, and Alucard barely leapt away before his other arm came rushing toward him with a howl of hot wind.

He hadn't accounted for the tail, which suddenly cracked out of nowhere, wrapping itself around him four times, then squeezing so hard that bones broke. Alucard laughed harder, blood raining from his lips.

"You're mad!" Pan snarled, transferring him from tail to hand again. This time he grabbed the arm that raised a gun to fire, and twisted it off like ripping petals off a daisy. Flesh teared and Alucard's pain blossomed like stars in front of his eyes. Pain was so great that he forgot laughter in an instant, and he merely gazed at the stump where his arm used to be, his mouth still ticking a little at the corners as if it was all an amusing joke aimed toward him.

Pan committed the same with the other arm... and one by one, dismembered limbs dropped to the ground at Pan's feet. Lastly was Alucard's head, his infuriating smile pasted on his bloodied lips, which he left in place. "Why are you still smiling?" Pan growled, dropping Alucard to the ground. In a breath of fire, he abandoned his demonic form in favor of the mortal one again. He stood over the vampire's maimed body, his shadow blocking out the moonlight.

The handsome man gazed at his victim and his handiwork as though he were unsatisfied with the product and considering drastic, but necessary improvements. Of course he wished Alucard was howling in agony and cursing him in all his native tongues rather than smiling that satisfied little grin of his while a pool of crimson slowly grew around him, gaining an inch or two in circumference as seconds passed. Pan's decisive gaze hardened as he lifted his hand slowly and held it over Alucard's body. A point of light grew from his palm, pulsed, then expanded in size until it engulfed his entire hand. "This magic is enough to undo you, body and soul. Suffice it to say, I will not be sorry to see you go. Like the brothers Sparda, you are a traitor. An unwanted _smudge_ on the clear glass of my new perfect world. Nothing more than to wipe you away."

Alucard did not appear worried. But there was a slight sadness in his eyes. Not because he just might die, or that he failed. Maybe he was disappointed. But was this very man an opponent worth fighting?

Suddenly, a loud report of a gun roared from behind, swallowing a feminine cry of pain. Pan's body lurched, and the destructive ball of magic dispelled itself, showering harmlessly over Alucard's body. He spun around, gripping his chest where a bullet had blasted through. Vivian dropped Alucard's black gun, the twisted bones of her hands broken from the immense recoil, her feeble hands trembling from the force of the weapon.

Her eyes went wide as Pan stared at her, then began to advance toward her. She staggered backwards, her breathing becoming a series of rapid, terrified pants and whimpers. She tripped and fell on her rear, cradling her hand to her chest. "No," she said, "no, you won't win!" She gave a surprisingly shrill cry of anger and lunged back to her feet and flung herself at her grandfather, her sharp little teeth aimed to bite, since both hands were occupied.

Then she was face-down in the ground, pain upon pain consuming her at last. She felt a hard heel of a boot in her spine before she lost all sensation underscored by a loud crunch. She tried to understand what had happened. She couldn't roll over; her eyes watered, and she lifted her head, pain blissfully gone. Ears ringing. She felt peaceful, somehow, as if something had suddenly become a little clearer...

"Now you shan't get up again, dear, and bother grandfather at his business," he clucked at her. Then he struck her face with his shoe again. The agony was so far away, and though his next words filled her with deep, damaging sorrow. "Worthless bitch. You've fulfilled your purpose. Now you won't be able to run again."

Pan felt a brush of cold against his back... and then new pain exploded from his solar plexus. When he looked down, he saw someone's arm knifing through his body from his chest. Sigils along the back of a white-gloved hand pulsed, then flared with light so bright that it stung his eyes.

"This magic works against all manner of demons," Alucard whispered in his ear. "I was waiting for you to do something ridiculous. Perhaps turning your back on what you assumed was a fallen foe." He twisted the arm, and a gout of blood refreshed itself, soaking into the ground and Vivian's clothes.

"No." Pan's tongue barely reached the top of his mouth to say the word.

There came an amused contradiction: "Yes. Now, girl... once more. Show your worth again." He peered at the broken girl, felt a small inch of pity creep up his throat.

Vivian whimpered, and said softly, "A...Asmodeus... please go... go back to where you belong. _Asmodeus, I command you_!"

Pan's eyes flew wide open and he shouted with renewed vigor, struggling as magic more potent than Alucard's sigils filled him with searing black, mind-blowing agony. His strangled voice died as a portal burned into the earth flared with hellfire, opening to a world Alucard had never laid eyes on - at least this close - before. Piece by piece, atom-by-atom, Asmodeus's body was sucked into the void... screaming until his mouth became a hundred little dots sucked down as well. When the flames swallowed the last piece of him, the portal suddenly slammed shut, uninvited guests locked out.

Vivian closed her eyes and laid her cheek down on the ground. She heard footsteps, along with other sounds such as the portal's echoes across the country-side. At least she wasn't in pain. She couldn't imagine being like Alucard, fighting and getting his body torn to bits... She still didn't quite understand how he had survived...

"Do you want to live?"

She licked her lips and licked the ground in the process.

"Do you want to live, girl?" He sounded patient, like a grandfather speaking to a child. Alucard crouched beside her and looked her from head to toe, determining the level of damage.

"Mister... Alucard?"

"What?"

"Am I worthless?"

"No. Certainly not! Ridiculous."

"That's good... that's... fine." She breathed a little deeper. "Tell... Vergil... I'm sorry. And... also?" Here was the last struggle, to get out what she wanted to say. "I... love..."

Alucard looked down and wrinkled his brow, consternation or thought blossoming behind his eyes. Her eyes would stare forever without seeing. He shut them for her. It was a beautiful night to die, and he couldn't choose a better one for Vivian.

"And now for the boys," he said softly, after burying the girl's body under some earth. No one would miss her, but he would know how she had helped. And he'd tell everyone about it, just because he'd never live with himself if he let everyone think she was just someone else's pawn. He turned his red-coated back to the scene and took to the sky in a cloud of bats to find the quickest way to the Hellsing Estate.


	9. Chapter 9

A/N: y'know, I've discovered every time I go to write 'author's' I write 'Arthur's'... ha. So maybe I'll just reduce it to the two-letter thing. Anyway, uh. Someone help me. It might be fun. After finishing this chapter, should I continue it? How will the world go back to normal? Will Dante set up shop in London and fix the rising demon problems there, and work under the table for the Hellsing Organization? Or will Dante still be a one-man show?

---------- **CHAPTER 9**--------

Inside the tower was another story for Dante's perspective.

Dreamworld clocktower's are always grossly out of proportion inside than they are outside. Rather than going up, this one liked to go down. And down. And down. Dante wanted to know who Pan's contractor was so he could give him his props for making the most impracticle basement in the history of everything. Well, it ranked second only to Vergil's big-scawy-tower.

The stairs were made of stone, cracked and crumbling in some places, and apparently not supported by anything. The emon architexture, he guessed, seemed to be based on faith alone. Funny. Regardless, he ran down the steps. He needed to go as fast as he could, heartpounding, risk it all. If he did not do that, it wasn't worth the doing, now was it? Or something. On the walls hung the remnants of human skulls, lacking lower mandibles, and turned upside down. Jammed into the place where the pallet should be were candles. The eyes glowed from within, and Dante could feel the collective gazes of tortured souls looking back at him. The farther down he went, the closer the skulls were placed on the walls, the brighter the torrential glow. The eyes were cherry red; they reminded Dante of the nosferatu's eyes when he was full up with the lust for battle. The sight triggered a deep-rooted lust for a decent challenge in him, as well.

Charged with boredom, he started to talk to himself, "Guess elevatars weren't in the planning design. Not that I'm complaining. Okay, I lied; maybe I am. A _little_."

Suddenly, after several dozen feet of stairs and skulls and eyes, he halted to a stop and pulled his sword for a fight. Nearly a dozen demons suddenly detached themselves from the walls disguised as the skull lanterns. Their heads spun on their necks with a sound like rusty pipes rubbing each other. Weapons of choice: Lengths of metal, spiked at one end, and a long wheat-cutting scythe.

Dante twirled Rebellion between his fingers, dripping with cocky self-absorbed confidence. "I think you guys don't _get_ it: Scythes. Don't. Work. On. Me." Rebellion made a straight, unerring path toward the first skulled demon to advance, and switched direction, catching it in the thigh and knocking it to the steps. It scrabbled and squealed like an old faucet; the advance of its enraged comrades drove it off the stairway and into the glow of lamplight below.

The man/demon caught the long handle of the second assaulter's scythe with one hand and drove the tip of Rebellion through its abdomen, pushed it off with his foot and kept the scythe for himself. He sent the borrowed weapon spinning like a wild propeller at the third that took the blade in the chest and fell backward into a fourth and fifth monster with its momentum. With a blur of white hair he darted in, knocked the group of demons upward; when they reached their apex he swapped for Ebony and Ivory and filled them up with holes, keeping them aloft with a simply unending fountain of spraying metal.

Six came forward more carefully, seeing its comrades go down so fast. There wasn't a shred of hope between all of them of crowding past Dante on the stair to break up his rhythmic destruction. Right now, it had come to a lull. They were confused by his inaction. There he was waited, dazedly knocking the smoking muzzle of Ivory against his shoulder.

"C'mon. No need to be shy. You'll _all_ get your turn."

Then he sprang, too edgy to wait, too excited to let them come to him; sword-point first, he kicked off the step and reduced the closest demon, number six, to a pin-cushioned ruin, bringing him to a booming finale with a direct point-blank shotgun blast. Lucky number seven came up over the broken body with a spry leap, sending forth a cry of bloodlust that was more suitable filling the empty spaces of a horror flick soundtrack. Dante darted forward and twisted his arm behind to reduce the creature's progress to a clumsy stagger as it landed where Dante used to be. Now he was surrounded. He fired bullets just at the demon's feet, and jumped again, catching the wall and flipping upside-down to fire a rainstorm of bullets toward the crowding demon spawn. Chunks of mortar and stone fell apart under the pepper of ammunition, threatening its structural integrity. Flawlessly shifting from firearms to sword, he brought his blade crashing down with the precision of a guillotine, scattering body parts and skulls to the four cardinals. The group had bunched up now in the confusion in a tangled mess of bodies and skulls and scythes.

After a preemptive swordswing, they were conveniently rendered bye-bye. Dante stood for a second, then knocked a skull over the edge into the fiery gloom with a scoff.

"Just not the same where you come from, eh, Pan?" he asked the dream demon once he'd regained his feet. He was glad he could almost feel his ire, pouring from every corner of the clocktower. "Don't worry about it. Spawning devils, or whatever, isn't for everyone, I hear."

The stairs continued down, and when the urge to jump took him to break up the dragging monotony of taking the steps three or four at a time, he took the chance of leaping down into the unknown. Where he landed was in the midst of a hundred gleaming human skeletons, some of them entwined with each other in various configurations with connective tissues still fusing the skeletons as one. Without the benefit of facial expression frozen in death, each skeleton looked like a grinning maniac in the unsteady glow of torches lining wet, sticky walls. Somebody was hungry, Dante figured. Somebody needed to go on L.A. weight loss.

Dante sauntered through this graveyard of bones; from his swagger, one could say he was not uneased in the slightest. He almost seemed to fidget from the inside out for something to happen, waiting.

"I'm waiting," Dante pulled a face. "Or did I deplete the fun-meter already?"

Gloomy silence closed its teeth over his words. He scuffed his boot through a layer of thick dirt and clumps of dust to find the floor. The moment he disturbed it, the skeletons all leapt up, some of them still locked with their partners with their grinning pale bones twisting to look at him. Their collective scrutiny followed him as he walked slowly toward a pair of what looked like doors at the opposite end of the room. Before he reached them, the skeletons jerked into surprisingly fast motion. Dante severed a pair from one another as they drew close with a swordstrike.

This seemed to spread the message to the others to stay the hell away. Bored with the quiet, dead onlookers, Dante turned his back on them once he figured they were just a more peaceful breed of freaks.

The half-devil reached the door which looked made of two dozen or so enormous rib bones of some ancient beast. No doorknobs, but when he pushed they opened like double doors on hinges of rope and nails in the walls. Beyond that door there was no light at all. Dante took a torch from the previous room and tossed it in the middle, and saw that he had terrified a handful of rats from a fresh corpse in the center of this new room.

Then he saw a glitter of white in the torchlight and realized it may not be a corpse. His throat closed and he couldn't breathe but he ran to the body anyway, hoping fate would smile on his shitty luck.

He looked down at the body. It was Vergil; he was unconscious and very still, though his body's very slight movements indicated he was in fact breathing. He was bleeding from various cuts and open sores, and it looked as if someone had hurriedly dressed him. He wasn't even thinking that this would be a trap. It was the oldest damn trick in the book, and the reason why they were so old is because they worked.

A sudden spotlight came on with a crackle of power. Then a few more spotlights came on, right on Dante and Vergil. Dante's shadow was cast in six different directions. Most bizarrely, music had come on; it sounded like some kind of piano rag that folks would play during the Three Stooges.

"Braaaavo! Bravo, bravo! Oh dear, you appear to be quite upset." The voice echoed from all over. Uh-oh. The old 'speaking from the shadows' gig.

"Man, didn't I tell you about that? It ain't really that funny anymore."

"I'm not laughing! But you should really lighten up, after all. You've completed your quest. Now you get to go home." The voice crackled, and cut out completely while the blindingly irritating piano music shambled on, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, like twisted carousel tunes.

"And here I was hoping I'd get a free T-shirt and a keychain." He had been so busy looking for the source of the voice; suddenly he looked down at Vergil and felt his guts suddenly feel five feet lower than the rest of him.

Foam was dribbling from the corner's of Vergil's mouth, and he was getting up to his knees, his head canted to one side as if his neck had a crick in it. He rolled his head back and then reached his left hand for the sheath of the Yamato at his side.

"Now make nice-nice with big brother," Pan crowed. "After all, it's been so long!"

Vergil, seemingly possessed by something far stronger than he could control, let fly his trusty blade. It nearly cut Dante in half horizontally if he hadn't jerked his stomach in and then bounded away. Vergil was fast and followed him by getting to his feet, his breathing rapid, growling and foaming and appearing, for all intents and purposes, _fuck nuts. (_What else is new? Dante wanted to know with a touch of black sarcasm.)

"Vergil." Dante tried, but the sound of his voice triggered another attack. Swords clashed as he blocked and darted out of reach of the sword and then some. Vergil's sword could cut even from a distance, extending far beyond the physical blade's reach. "Somehow - correct me if I'm wrong - I don't think I'm getting through to you."

The brothers circled again, and the spotlights followed them - three to each brother.

Dante didn't mind fighting, really. Most demons proved nearly no contest, except... his brother, who could offer a real challenge, some real fun. That special warm, fuzzy feeling that stirred up his blood and put him in a frothing mixture of delight and wrathful hate. But right now, this thing that was snarling scarily was not Vergil. Hell, it could be another illusion and he was just wasting his time while the REAL Vergil was somewhere, pissing his brains out with impatience waiting for him. But what if he did away with this one and realized he'd killed him...?

Alucard's words echoed back to him. _Everything matters in this world!_

"Yeah, I know," he muttered, ducking before he lost his head to Vergil's sword. And now all of a sudden Vergil was wildly attacking, a hurricane of swordstrikes coming from any and all directions. Dante was sweating bullets as he fought to maintain the brutal pace of the advances. He couldn't waste time to talk Vergil out of being crazy. The sword Vergil wielded did make contact - several times - filling Dante's vision with bright red flashes at the edges of his vision. And when it did, it cut deep, and Dante's blood poured freely from his body. His muscles ached; simply blocking Vergil's rapidly harrowing blows was becoming a chore.

The music continued, a chaotic off-key jamfest in honor of this madness. Considering the predicament, Dante thought this was all pretty damn tiresome. He'd had enough. He wanted Vergil - his Vergil, safe and sound and, oh yeah, perfectly sane, thanks.

Not later.

NOW.

He used an opportunity to send his heel into Vergil's thigh and send him skittering, breaking up his routine and winning a very quick second of respite. Not merely that but a split-second of inattention; an opening to snap Vergil out of it - whatever IT was. Dante pulled a gun fast and fired just short of blowing Vergil's brains out. The whistle and heat of the bullet, the tinkle of the casing, all were elements of perfect harmony.

Vergil froze and seemed a tad bit alarmed, as if he realized something in that screwed up head of his that he almost died.

More of Alucard's ill-bidden advice: _When you find Vergil... _Oh, what the hell did he say?

Dante locked his eyes with Vergil's just for a second; he breathed deeply, seeing blood trickle from somewhere over Vergil's ear. Maybe he got him a little too close.

"What are you waiting for? Finish him!" The megaphone-like voice shrieked, underscored by a discord in the music.

His arm feeling like a lead weight, he lowered the gun while considering his fairly limited options. But the voice over the megaphone seemed to have an invigorating effect on the other brother, who shook his head, and renewed his advance with a demonic roar. The blade spawned sparks as it scraped the floor. Every instinctive bone in Dante's body forced him to jerk back, and then rebound off the blow and give him some space, backing up and up, then running around Vergil to find a way to tire him out. It didn't look like it would happen soon.

So he tried something else. Bullets pinged off the Yamato as Vergil spun it like a windmill, reducing it to a blur too fast for even Dante to capture the motion. Ricocheting bullets flew wide, most harmless. And then one nailed Dante right in the leg. "Ow..." He gritted his teeth. "Okay, no fair. That, like, never happens."

He felt like he'd been cut from a harness and jerked back a step. Then it was too late; Vergil was in his face, somehow, sudden and aggressive. He barely brought the two guns up in time to block him. Yamato got stuck between the two swords. Sparks flew and heat warmed the sword. It forced a discharge out of Ebony, and a gun pinged off rocks high above unseen in the dark.

"Hi there." Sweat dripped down his belly and soaked in at the waistband of his jeans. Blood made the floor slick; he slid backward an inch, then another, his shoes making a gravelly scrape. Vergil was straining with every ounce of strength at his disposal, pushing to break free of the hold and watch his blade plunge through Dante's heart. At this distance, the older twin's eyes were visibly filled with a green hue to cover up his blue. His pupils were tiny pinpricks of black, his lips curved back in a preemtive sneer of victory.

"You really want to do this?" His knuckles were bone white. " 'Kay. But this won't be pretty."

Like slipping a trick knot, it really was as easy as letting go. Vergil nearly lost his balance, as if he didn't understand what Dante was implicating when he said those very words. The blood made Dante's shoes squeak on the floor; his hands loosened and the swordpoint continued like a film that had been paused and now the sequence resumed with calculated, unassuming accuracy. It was painful - Dante didn't care how many damn times he was punctured through his body with a sharp, pointy object,_ it fucking hurt. _Like Hell, Dante added mentally with a sordid snicker that produced blood as well as a look of shock on his brother's face.

Vergil abrubtly let go of the weapon lodged into Dante's ribcage. Blood joined the sweat staining his jeans, pouring out and out. Dante responded by dropping both guns and latching onto his forearms before he could retreat. If it were not for that, he would have collapsed backward.

Fallen, maybe, and that would have been the end. Except Vergil was holding on, too. The musical score that had been haunting the event suddenly began to skip like a bad record... and then break off into a series of unorganized notes.

Pan moved into view of the brothers wearing a smile of utter satisfaction. "Good. Beautiful. Now you can die together, while I absorb the power within your blood. Suffice it to say, I've never witnessed a more poignant drama between two loving brothers before."

Suddenly a rumbling boom began to fill the confines of the blood-spattered arena. With a crescendo, it stopped with a crashing explosion; a huge crack scored through the ground just to Dante's left. Bits of ceiling began to fall down, and Pan's face, which wore its gloating smile, suddenly split as well.

The dreaming demon grabbed his face and pulled skin, muscles, tendons, from his skull and howled like a banshee before he vanished utterly. Dante felt Vergil take hold of his sword and yank with unwarranted violence to free it. But the pain seemed faded and unimportant. He noticed that Vergil's wounds were disappearing as if the 'normal' Vergil were being superimposed slowly over him. His eyes became the same clear, cold, uncaring blue of before.

"I think the show's over." Dante rubbed his belly where his sword wound was fading.

"You think so, too, hm?" Vergil's mouth twisted into a smile. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then looked up at one of the flickering, dimming spotlights.

"Think we can, y'know, wake ourselves up or are we screwed still?"

"I think we better. Let's wait and see." He side-stepped; a chunk of ceiling had fallen just where he had stood and would have made him a bright bloody smear. "Better yet, let's just run."

* * *

Integra Hellsing stared out her bedroom window, sleeplessly refilling her cup of coffee. In her belt she had secured a sizable Colt pistol. A much larger weapon, a shotgun, was mounted on her shoulder with a strap. Suddenly she fixed her blurred eyes on the lightening sky; imposed on the horizon, a black shape. Rapidly approaching. She shoved her coffee onto her dresser and threw open the window, sticking her head out and squinting to make the silhouette clearer. No mistaking it, it was Alucard.

The bat-Alucard closed in on her. She pulled her head in and stepped aside to let him enter; a cloud of grey mist replaced the bat, then formed into the fully-dressed Alucard she was familiar with.

The nosferatu's graceful turn made her heart relax. She hadn't realized before how tightly her shoulders had been clenching, nor how little she had let herself relax.

He reached toward her. Her eyes blurred again. "Were you worried, Master?"

"Not in the least," she lied, and fell against his chest. "Though I could feel that demon's magic the whole time; it's not as if I can stop it. I did all I could. With these." She lifted her arms, her sleeves turned up. Her shoulders slumped when he took her hands and curled up his lip at the blood.

Then he lifted her hands closer to his face. Her eyes flew open wide and she jerked them free, a cutting edge to her words. "Alucard."

He laughed mockingly at her disgruntled state. "Forgive me my greivances. I'm hungry."

"You didn't forget where the blood storage was, I hope."

"I thought you might reward me."

"Maybe." She was still bitterly grumpy. "But first, go check on our honored guests in the basement. I think Seras is okay. She didn't seem to be harmed too much--"

There was a shattering crash from just down the hallway. It startled Integra so hard that she smacked her hand on Alucard's arm as she went to reach for her gun. "Speaking of whom--" he chuckled as he pivoted toward the door.

The hallway was a becoming a mess. The two originators of the mayhem were the infamous duo. The brothers had come up the stairs quietly enough, but something - maybe a coarse phrase from Dante - had triggered a violent response from the other, serious-faced one. Hell, maybe they were just fighting for shits and giggles. A little family reunion.

Either way, they were both perfectly all right - if that was not already obvious from the way Dante was rebounding off the wall and filling the just-last-week varnished floor with a number of unsightly holes with his twin Colt pistols. Alucard watched the bullets become exchanged for an undignified curse and a flurry of blue coat and steel.

Dante had just barely retreated beyond sword-reach. He would have lost an ear. "Slow, slow," he laughed, twirling the guns in his hands. "Getting old on me?"

Between one monster and another, this was not a fight to the death. Alucard could see it; between, sparks flared. Not the killing kind; the fueding kind. The kind of unending cycle of thirsting for something to complete the unsatisfied half of their beings. Inwardly, maybe, Alucard could feel a little jealous of what the brothers had. It wasn't the sappy romance, the bittersweet teen angst that Dante masked so very carefully with thick, brilliant layers of sarcasm and cutting wit, or even simply the base desire that pulsed beneath the other things.

Only Alucard knew, like Integra didn't, that they were playing, like two angry tiger cubs, crashing against each other and struggling with growls and sometimes cut by a quick, breathless laugh. And even though Vergil tries hard, hard not to show he's _enjoying_ it, Alucard could see otherwise. You can't fight a blaze by blowing on it. You can't kill it, stab, or blast it away. It's definitely there, and eventually Dante's attitude rubbed off on Vergil, stripping off his cold exterior like paint remover. Vergil started to smile, though it was a crazed one.

Alucard was too lost in watching them break things when Integra shouted, "That's ENOUGH!"

The boys ceased; Integra had a way of sounding very motherly. No, like a pissed mother bear. The 'cubs' froze, trembling like colts ready to bolt wildly in opposite directions.

"Oh, hey." Dante straightened and pushed back his hair from his forehead. Vergil sheathed his sword, looking comically sheepish. "Sorry, lady. Guess it's kind of pointless to say, 'put it on my tab'."

Integra fairly bristled, and while she fought to keep from combusting all over him with a stream of well-chosen expletives, Alucard stepped near her. "I'll see that they are fairly punished."

Dante and Vergil watched as the nosferatu turned Integra around and led her back into her room, and saw that she was put to sleep.

The brothers felt the energy seep out of them. A few minutes ago, they had woken up right next to each other - actually touching - and avoided eye-contact for two of the minutes after they'd gained consciousness. Neither of them knew what to say, where to begin. Printed on Dante's face was a blatant look of distrust. But, like Alucard said, everything that happens in the dreamscape matters because that's where people go to find out who the hell they are, what they want. What they need.

And at some point, at precisely the same time, Vergil reached the same conclusion as Dante. Dante had turned finally, scrutinized his brother, then his face had lit up with a slow smile, half-grin, half-satirical snarl. He reached out to grab the back of Vergil's neck and squeeze and shake him, and the older twin grudgingly offered a small smile, although obviously there was trouble on his mind.

"For old time's sake?" Dante offered, half-teasnig, half-serious.

Vergil shrugged his hand off. "For old times' sake."

And now they were standing together, guiltily examining the damage they had caused. Alucard emerged from the bedroom and stared them down for a few seconds.

Vergil turned. "And you must be that thing that was in the coffin."

Alucard's upper lip curled up slightly in disdain.

Dante stepped in front of Vergil, swaggering slightly. "Hey, now. Be nice to my new buddy."

A flicker of jealousy passed through the brother's eyes. "I'm Vergil," he said to Alucard.

"Giddy with pleasure." The nosferatu turned away. "I have orders to obey. I must take command where my master has need of sleep. Give me no more trouble. If you must-" He chuckled. "..'play'... do it outside. There's a perfectly marvelous garden behind the Estate."

"Actually, kind of hungry." Dante hesitantly took a step from Vergil, as if afraid to leave him unsupervised. But the sentiment was echoed by Vergil's stomach, which uttered a groaning gurgle.

The brothers turned as one; Dante followed his memory to the kitchen and kicked open the doors, and rummaged in the freezer.

Vergil perched on a counter and watched him, not sure what he was hungry for. His stomach still clenched and twisted; perhaps he was mistaking it for something else.

Momentarily distracted, he heard Dante laugh victoriously as he came forth out of the freezer with a five-gallon tub of ice cream.

"You can't possibly be eating that." Vergil gawped as Dante ignored him, dumped the tub on the counter, then rummaged some more. He opened cupboards, dumping contents in his brisk search for the ideal topping for the first, real, tasty, strawberry sundae.

A minute or two of thorough hunting produced some chocolate chips, whipped cream from the freezer, strawberries and strawberry flavored sauce. He yanked up a stool and planted his butt on it. A bowl, a massive spoon, and the items all crowded around each other for space next to Vergil.

"You haven't changed." With a dry, crackling smile, Vergil watched his brother prepare his coup de grace of sundaes.

"Nope. Now watch me kill this." With a flourish he carved out one, two, three. Six whopping scoops of ice cream into a beige bowl. Strawberries, sauce, and chocolate chips. Then with a grinding hiss, whipped cream. His eyes had gone huge, huger than his stomach of course.

Vergil's stomach moaned when Dante lifted a spoonful and crammed it into his mouth. "Bite?" he sputtered, realizing that Vergil was staring at him with hardly any pretenses of trying to look like he really wasn't.

"That is... _so_ disgusting." Dante waited, and Vergil added, "But you can't imagine how much I _want_ that." His voice had taken on a slightly husky tone, fairly lustful for the joyous ice creamy goodness heaped in front of his brother.

"Get your own!" Dante jabbed his thumb at the still-open tub of ice cream.

And so Vergil hopped down and moved to forage for a spoon. He found one, and dug into the tub and spooned the sugary-fruity substance through his lips. It wasn't filling of course. He only had a few mouthfuls before he went to the fridge and made a sandwich. He couldn't find the knives. The Yamato was perfectly capable of serving such a mundane purpose. Besides, it was funny seeing him take the blade to a chunk of uncut smoked turkey.

Companionable silence ensued. It almost - _though not quite_ - felt like home.


	10. Chapter 10

**Author's Notes**: Alright, folks. Here's where I have a little break from heart-pounding action.

**Chapter 10 (Is My Favorite Number)**

The Sparda twins spent a sleepless day together. Exhaustion was not on their list of ailments, since nothing in their dream had afflicted their physical bodies. They were curious about Integra Hellsing; she had been sleeping for hours at a time to make up for her troubling lack of it. And the butler, Walter, emerged unharmed from the nightmare world Pan/Asmodeus had concocted shaken up a bit. He made his presence known by sedately moving into the kitchen after the brothers' first shared meal. He stared at the twins for a long moment, his single monocle agleam with distrust, before retreating to seek Sir Integra.

After awhile, Vergil explored. Dante was obliged to follow. He couldn't trust the guy to be left alone. He didn't see anyone else jumping at the chance to stalk him.

Alucard and Walter and a number of Integra's paperwork army were unavailable to ask any questions about how Alucard's battle had gone, but since everyone was wide awake now and shuddering with still-remembered horrors, he had only to assume.

Vergil marched outside to the garden Alucard mentioned in passing. The sun was a dull-copper disk and _real_. Dante felt a bubbling relief at the normal manner in which the birds paraded across the dreary London morning sky.

"Penny for your thoughts," Dante asked the blue-tinted silhouette under a garden willow tree. A breeze gently tossed around the sleepy, stringy leaves and partially obscured the the figure.

Dante waltzed through them, brushing them aside. An iron bench was poignantly taking advantage of the shade, but Vergil was not sitting down. His head was bent down and he looked to be deeply in thought, bringing Dante's confident walk to a slower pace.

"Did..." Vergil's voice cut out as he wrung his hand into a fist. "Did you happen to see what happened to that girl?"

"What girl? Oh." Dante rubbed his neck in thought. "Yeah, Alucard said he saw her. But only in some vision or something."

"I see."

A figure suddenly moved from within the bark of the tree... and as it was perfectly shaded, two pairs of eyes made themselves known, fixed upon Vergil's back. Dante twitched, and instinct moved his fingertips toward his holsters.

_Relax_, a voice purred in his mind. It was the familiar basso laughter of the nosferatu Alucard.

Vergil turned and stared at the spot where the eyes had appeared. Now a body moved from within the bark and stepped toward them, solidified into a red-dressed vampire. Alucard threw himself back into the iron bench and smiled at Vergil.

"I almost forgot." He tossed his nose at the house. "The girl was the one who brought me back from the dream."

"Really." Vergil deadpanned.

"She had no idea that Pan was hitch-hiking in her soul. It turns out, she even doubted her reasons for being so smitten with you. But whatever happened holds no water now. Listen, because she had something she wanted me to tell you."

Dante crossed his arms. He'd never met that chick. He felt somehow solemn though.

"Did she die?" Dante asked suddenly.

"Yes. Heroically, if you must know." This was directed at the stoic, cold Vergil, who so far hadn't shown any sign of giving a damn about what he needed to say. Alucard smiled. "She died painlessly, her body broken, feeling worthless, but nonetheless conveying her deepest wish that you, Vergil Sparda, were loved by her. Worshipped by her. In a way," Alucard observed suddenly, his lips breaking into a fanged sneer, "this mess is actually your fault. If you had paid closer attention to the girl, you wouldn't have underestimated her. You may have prevented people's deaths and suffering."

"They mean nothing to me," Vergil suddenly interrupted. "And neither did she. If you feel it is your moral obligation to fill me with guilt, you're simply wasting your time."

Dante gritted his teeth, watching as the smile Alucard maintained became a pinch darker. "Very well. I wonder - is it your soul that still rots in Hell while you yet walk the earth? Or did you just lose it along the way?" He dissolved on the spot into a mass of writhing shadows and eyes, before sliding up the tree bark and into the hollow near two conjoined branches.

Dante took his place shortly afterward, dumping himself into a comfortable position while glaring over the top of his nose at his unmoving twin. "Really. You suck at relationships more than I do. She was probably hot, too."

"He's right," Vergil growled suddenly. "About my soul, anyway. What do you know?"

"I know you're my brother, and you're fucking torn up as hell about what happened to that chick. What was her name anyway?"

Vergil didn't answer.

"You don't even remember?"

"No."

"Oh my God." Dante threw himself to his feet, spinning him around and snarling, "Are you serious? You can't even remember her fucking _name_?"

But Vergil's expression stopped him. Rather than wrathful, the twin's face was suffused with a confused sort of sadness. As if forgetting was a sin greater than being cold and heartless. It only added to the heaping mountain of wrongs that Vergil had accumulated in his short life. He seemed to break under the weight of it, and tightened his mouth.

"You gonna cry now?" Dante threw his weight against him and shoved him. "Don't cry for how sorry you are. Cry for the shit you put me through, and that girl who kissed the ground you walked on. Hell, cry for mom." Catching some momentum in his rant, the angry brother started shouting at his brother. "She's turning in her _grave_ because of you, you selfish prick! Probably wondering where the hell she went wrong!"

"Get out of my face," Vergil hissed. "Right now."

"No." He shoved again. "Make me." Another shove, this time threatening to unbalance. "Fuck you. I hate you. I hate the way you look at me and how everything else seems too beneath you - like you can't stand to be ordered in the same genus as everyone else - like you're the fucking king of the world. Well, go ahead and fucking cry. You're a sack of shit."

"You don't mean that!" Vergil shouted back, exploding forward. "Hate's a strong word, Dante!"

"Yeah? Well, it sure seems fitting for you!" The heavy sense of futility seemed too much for Dante, and he struck him with his closed fist full in the face. A soft lip busted open like a berry, squirting red juice up the side of Vergil's carved jaw.

Vergil stood frozen still, his icy eyes full of death. And nothing. For a second Dante's anger rose several magnitudes. He smelled blood; it was enough to fill him with a red-rimmed hunger to punch his face to unrecognizable crushes bones. In the same turn, he wanted to do something impossible. Something he couldn't dream of doing since that time, so long ago, when things were blurry and confused. He breathed hard, his jaw clenched, his teeth grating together.

"Hell with you," he muttered, not even seeing the unbidden pun behind the words. He turned on his heel when Vergil refused to fight back with words or action - walking away seemed a fine idea - and ducked his head to smack aside some of the willow leaves.

_Wait._ Vergil closed his lips tightly, trembling, but the conflict left him as soon as he couldn't see the red-coated twin anymore.

_He can't stay mad at you_, he reasoned, wiping his lip slowly with the back of his hand and smiling through the sting in his lip that remained though the cut was long gone. He licked his blood from his knuckle, and thought that relaxing seemed a decent idea.

He sat on the bench, the Yamato not far away while it laid across his lap, hearing the guilt-inducing echoes of the nosferatu in his mind concerning the whereabouts of his soul. Of course he felt guilty. But that did not necessarly prove he had a soul - or did it? He reached up to wrap one loop of the chain of the large crimson gem around his finger and tighten it.

He had a soul, all right. Otherwise, why did Vergil feel haunted by this feeling of regret?

* * *

Dante stomped his way to the end of the hallway leading to the bunker area where Hellsing's Finest were wont to hang around. He wanted to hurt something. _Bad._ The feeling he felt when Vergil looked so cool and unruffled when he told him all those things - the sense that no matter what he said or did, Vergil wouldn't change - really chapped his nuts.

After all this, only to find out Vergil was still an insufferable know-it-all jerk, playing a devil's game with other people's live at stake. Irresponsible and under-handed! Dante stopped walking and stared at the wall, just as his fist flew before his conscience could stop it.

He gaped at the sizable hole he'd made in the stonework before he rubbed his knuckles in repentance. "Sorry, Inte-whatever." He smiled. "Foot me the bill later." He continued on, and noticed some doorways leading down. This was the way he'd come up before with Vergil, only he hadn't noticed the smell of death, decay, and general unpleasantness.

He headed down anyway, out of curiousity, partly hoping that there was some juicy action waiting in line for him on which he could take out his mountain of frustration concerning Vergil.

All he found was the coffin - which Alucard sat on - and a busty babe with blonde hair sulking on the edge of a simple mattress with brown sheets dressed in a fitting uniform that someone had purposefully made several sizes too small.

"But Master--" she whined in a slightly higher-octave than Dante found tolerable. She had that cute accent, though. Dante sauntered into view, and she glanced up once, her expression in place to placate her master vanishing. "You're not supposed to be down here!" she snapped.

"I'm not allowed, am I?" The half-devil chuckled. He looked over at Alucard, who smiled appreciatively. "So what's so damn important that I'm interrupting? Oh, wait. She called you 'Master'?" He backed up, waving his hands a little to ward off their weirdness. "Not really into that whole 'scene'."

"N-No," Seras quickly jumped up, dispelling his illusions with a frantic wave of her own hands. "Th-That's not it! You see, I'm--"

"My Draculina." Alucard raised a thin-stemmed glass to drain it of blood with a smile.

"You mean she's your vamp-baby? Cool." He grinned, and seemed to take special enjoyment in seeing her blush and then firmly cross her arms over her chest.

"I used to be an officer," she explained, "until I met my match against a vampire. Master shot me through the chest to destroy it, and in return, he gave me a choice. He really just saved my life. So I call him Master because... well, because he's stronger than I am and I'm indebted to him."

"Sounds pretty backwards to me. But, tch, what am I to say?" He found a spot to lean against, and pressed his back against a wall, thumbs in his jeans' belt loops.

Alucard seemed to find the conversation boring, and turned to recline against the lid of his coffin, ankles crossed, eyes closed, hands tucked behind his head, all long-limbed and quiet.

"So what's your name?"

"Seras Victoria."

"Cute. I'm Dante."

"I know." Then, carefully, Seras tipped her head. "You really do look like your brother. I met him, you know. He seems nice."

"Tch!" Dante's grin suddenly evaporated, reminded of the harsh reality that Vergil was hardly ever as he seemed these days. "You don't know him like I do. He'd--" He imagined a dozen possible things to complete that sentence that suited Vergil's propensity for asshole-ishness. His silence seemed to goad Seras into keeping her distance.

"Uh, anyhow. I'm going to see if I can find a bite--"

Alucard's burst of laughter cut in.

"--to eat," Seras finished, glaring at her dark lord and master. She slipped past Dante and into a small side-room near the stairs where undoubtedly blood was stored in case there was need of a noon snack. Dante's head rolled to follow her progress until she was out of sight.

"Plucky lady," he noted out loud to Alucard. Then he lowered his voice. "Vergil's going to be a problem."

"It's yours now." Alucard flicked his eyes at him. "Though if you would like my advice, Integra will not tolerate your presence in her home."

"Yeah? Where exactly does she expect us to go?" Dante wondered, for a split-second, what made him spout 'us' - as if Vergil and Dante suddenly became an entity. Where one goes...

"I don't know. She won't care. As long as it's far away from her. And from anyone to whom you might pose a threat." Alucard sat up slowly, as if he were a marionette led by a string in his chest. He cocked a ready smile.

"Harsh."

"It would seem so. But I have good news."

"Really?" Dante flicked a piece of lint from his pocket. He was penniless as the day he was born. "Oh, don't tell me - you saved a bunch of money on your car insurance by switching to--"

"You might not be out of a job just yet," the nosferatu interrupted. "Ever since Pan was exorcised from this world, I have been sensing creatures quite beyond the scope of vampires. Demons from that other world you call Hell."

At this, Dante perked up. Action? His inner coils tightened, and he couldn't help but smile. "And how many demon slayers do you know off-hand?"

Alucard matched his smile easily. "You take my meaning?"

The half-devil fingered the guns holstered behind him, and dreams of endless nights pumping lead into demon trash danced in his head. "Oh, yessir. I sure as hell do."

* * *

That afternoon, Integra insisted that she go straight to work.

First, she contacted Parliament and touched base with them. Several hundred people were hospitalized, institutionalized, or deceased in the aftermath of the dream holocaust. Newspapers churned out several stories of what really had happened. At first, the government wasn't talking. But eventually, in the following days, Parliament would address the world and call it a "chemical manufacturing plant accident" that leaked psycho-sleep medication into the drinking water of London and had leaked into some parts of Eastern Europe. The effects had been temporary, the side-effects ranging from permenant senility to total organ failure.

However, the Queen assured, a counter-chemical had been added to the water supply in several regions to break down the chemical bonds in the substance and that such a travesty would not happen again.

It was a hard pill to swallow. Naturally, many individuals did not believe a word of it. Shaken, the European community struggled to wake up from the nightmare of that day and move on with reality.

Secondly, Integra estimated the damage to the Estate, what kind of resources she needed to fulfill some of the Queen's newest missives in regard to bringing back law into the minds of the unlawful dead.

No one had reported any strange attacks. It seemed the presence of the demon Asmodeus had terrified even the vampires into laying low for awhile. As for demons, no signs so far.

Dante whiled the boring hours away for three days. He busied himself with playing soccer (or football, as they called it) in the huge field behind the Hellsing Estate while Vergil sat by, silent and uninterested in conversation. Having busted through several checkered balls with overzealous kicks, he decided to switch to something more productive indoors. He surfed the internet, read magazines, and ate. A lot.

Meanwhile, Vergil avoided Dante at all times. He wasn't really thinking about anything, really. In fact, he did everything he could to avoid thinking. He actually found a pretty decent individual in the house butler, Walter. The aged man was more spry and cunning than many could observe. He'd gone under Vergil's radar because of other things on his mind, but the older, wiser presence was almost comforting now that things had quieted down at long last.

For one thing, Walter had once been called the Angel of Death. During World War II, he had taken down several Nazi units alongside Alucard. Alucard, by the way, had been haunting Vergil's footsteps no matter where he went on the Estate. In doing so, he felt imprisoned. Those brilliant blood-colored eyes seemed to match his stare and refuse to let go.

Eventually, even avoiding Dante and listening to Walter's war stories proved tiresome. He then holed himself up in the library for hours, looking at books, finding one, and hiding to read it. Even though he hadn't caused trouble, he still felt that oppressive dark creature bearing down on him with a heartless scrutiny.

Vergil had never felt the desire to stab the walls before. But he did. Frequently.

Finally, just when Dante was tempted to eke out some revenge on some hapless soldier wandering the hallways for fun, he felt a tap on his shoulder and was addressed by a soldier. Similarly, Vergil was disrupted from his reading in the library.

The twins met up in the library, escorted by their respective Hellsing guards who looked snappy in their off-brown uniforms and coat of arms emblazoned upon their breast pockets.

"Guess we're going to see the Ice Queen," Dante intoned as he exchanged a sidelong look with Vergil.

"It would appear so. What do you think she wants to do with us?"

"Throw us in the dungeon? Claps us in irons? Chuck tea and crumpets at us? Who knows?" Dante's endless supply of one-liners had not yet reached its end; Vergil smiled a little to see their fight had not changed his brother's capacity for humor, however tasteless.

"Alright, let's see what she has to say." Once they came within reach of the door, Dante shoved his foot against it, knocked it open, and sauntered in. Thus was the meeting doomed.


	11. Chapter 11

**Author's Note**: I gave it a bit of thought, and talked with some friends, and this is what I decided to do with the half-devils we love. This story has the potential of becoming ridiculously long-winded, but I don't feel that peculiar sensation... what it's called... oh yeah. _Caring._

* * *

At the moment, Integra was seated at the far end of a long wooden table, an ashtray by her left hand and a set of papers in front of her. Alucard was not immediately visible, but his omniscient presence pervaded every corner of the room. Sir Integra looked better today. She wore a pair of white satin gloves, stained between her fingers where she had been holding a cigar for some time, a black-and-grey pinstriped uniform consisting of slacks rather than a skirt, a jacket, and a buttoned shirt. Her necktie wrapped around her neck to hide an otherwise conspicuous mark on her neck. The scent of cigar smoke curled up toward the blurred ceiling.

The room was long, large, and imposing, and the light from the lamps was a dirty yellow cognizant of old detective films. The room in its entirety looked like it had seen its share of warfare in its time.

Dante knew that he should not mistake their amiable adventure before as trustworthiness. He knew intuitively that at a word from Integra, Alucard would become his enemy in a heartbeat. He felt the metaphysical coils attached to his innate demon thirst for warfare tighten and click into place, ready to release seven different kinds of mayhem if that should happen.

Their escorts guided them to stand within Integra's line of sight, Dante looking around and whistling - as this was one sweet room and his imagination provided him with wondrous ideas of sliding a silver serving tray all down the length of it like a pro skateboarder.

When Dante felt pressure at his back he stiffened, and then effortlessly pivoted and startled the guard from plucking both Ebony and Ivory from their respective holsters. "You want a souvenir?" Dante purred in a low voice, barely masking the rumble of threat in his tone.

"Dante," Vergil warned.

"Leave it," Integra growled from between her teeth and the cigar she'd been champing on with impatience.

The guards left them alone, and retreated to a place along the wall. Dante curled his lip, wiped his nose, and shifted his weight on one foot to make himself comfortable.

"Alright, lady, what's the deal?" Dante growled, the ball of impatience he'd been holding down for some time now spilling like a cloud of corrosive steam.

Integra surprisingly smiled, gently expiring smoke through through one corner of her mouth. She ground the cigar into her ashtray and leaned back slowly, her generous bosom swelling as she took a deep breath. "Don't be fooled, son of Sparda. I have done a surprising amount of research. It wasn't very difficult; I simply had to look in the right places."

"So, wait, I thought this wasn't my world." Dante asked, eyes narrowing. "Then what the hell happened to the cash in my account? How come I can't reach Lady?" His eyes glittered with ferocious mistrust.

"I can't expound the details of your existence in this world. But I am keenly aware that you are from a parallel universe quite similar to our own. I looked up your business, Devil May Cry, and came up short. I checked the address where you once said your business was located and was told that the building had been gutted by a fire twenty years ago."

"How do you explain pulling up information about Sparda?" Vergil inquired, finding this all very hard to believe. How could he have emerged from the Hell of his world and into this one, where demons simply did not exist except perhaps in the bloodsucking variety? Ever since Vergil had come through, he had believed that this was still his world, only he had arrived through an exit point from Hell to an entirely different country, but still the same world...

"Perhaps it's one of the few parallels concerning demonology between our worlds. Apparently Sparda was a demon who fell in love with a mortal woman, and used his power to seal up the way to Hell itself." Integra took a long sip from a glass. "However, that's not the main point of our meeting here."

Dante forced himself from rolling his eyes. There was no known way he was getting home. Glancing at his brother quickly, he remembered he had already comforted himself with the fact that he was at least not alone. And his chances were good for getting in on a piece of demon action; even his super-heightened awareness could pick out their presence in the city already, coaxed out of hiding by the lull in the supernatural activity and aching to stir up their own.

Dante sauntered toward the table, tipped back a chair and dumped his butt into it, slouching, his hands behind his head as he gazed at the busty-but-mannish woman.

"Lay it on me," he sighed with exasperation.

Integra narrowed her eyes behind her glasses, and when she tipped her head at a slight angle, beams of the yellowish light made her eyes invisible behind the luminscent gleam, stripping Dante of the advantage of reading her eyes.

"I would want nothing more than to feed you both to Alucard as exotic appetizers," she groomed her words into something that sounded quite pleasant when you excused the actual meaning. "But it would be a pure waste of your talent. And in addition, there are problems beyond Alucard's ability to take care of within reason."

"Demons," Vergil said behind his brother, his eyes lighting up with a similar excitement.

"And I don't have the resources to consantly renew ammunition necessary to dispatch each and every one." With difficulty, she clarified: "So, much as I would see you reduced to a magnificent stain, I can't justify doing away with your talent in the process. You are the best qualified man to do the job."

"Don't tell me. You want me and Verge to join your little anti-freak fanclub?" The half-devil's words cut like razor wire through the calm and decisive sentences Integra had been weaving together. As much as her reinforced patience was strong, her explosive temper was stronger, and he could feel it building in the woman's frame. "Sorry, babe, but I don't play well with other kids."

Integra drank in his words with a little silence. "I wouldn't," she began, "even dream of besmirching Hellsing and the Crown with your filthy heathen blood. So consider yourself spared of that undignifying scenario."

Dante made a pseudo-impressed "Ooh" and stared her down for a minute longer. Then he leaned forward, smiling. "I don't need you. Any of you."

"Good."

Dante stood up abrubtly; mirrored by Integra's sudden regaining of her feet. He noticed she really was kind of tall, not quite willowy but brimming with all kinds of untapped fighting potential.

The guards at the wall were inching forward, uncertain but willing to check the willful Integra's anger so as to avoid a massacre.

"You are the most unspeakable piece of trash I've ever laid eyes on! At least your brother--" She jabbed a finger at Vergil, who flinched (he'd been daydreaming, forgotten as usual), "--has some sense of bloody honor!"

Suddenly Alucard solidified behind her chair, laying his eyes on Dante, who was tapping his foot impatiently, elbows bent, fingers crooked slightly as if he was expecting - no, blissfully anticipating - the woman to jump across the table slam her fist into various bits of his anatomy. The nosferatu, however, was not having any more of this. Dante's fidgeting slowed down, reading the unbidden threat in the vampire's almost pupilless eyes.

"Right, right, my bad." He hung back, although he was even more excited now than before. He bent his head to one side, forward, hiding his eyes, about as sheepish a posture as he could get. "I'm sorry, Sir Integra. And Bats-- I mean, Alucard."

Vergil had placed himself strategically close to his brother's right side, but seeing as the potential for fisticuffs had subsided, relaxed his hold on the pommel of the Yamato. His serious gaze fixed on the pair at the other end of the table.

"If you're not interested in having Dante and I work for you in the open," he suggested in a level, disarming voice, "maybe you'd be willing to support us under-the-table for the time being. Set a place up for Dante to live, pass information about demon activity."

This idea seemed to bloom into reality in Integra's eyes. She definitely couldn't live with herself if the Sparda twins continued to live in her house and break things on an almost daily basis.

"Then it's settled," she said. "You'll start up a new Devil May Cry shop here in London with Hellsing's unofficial support. I've written up a letter for the Queen's eyes alone to alert them to the situation and your existence."

"Cool," was all Dante said, scratching at an itchy hard-to-reach-spot just between his shoulderblades.

* * *

On the outskirts of London's Red Light District, as far as possible from the respectable well-groomed lawns of the Hellsing Organization, stood a dilapidated building crumbling with the slow decay of abandonment. But on one corner, taking up two floors of empty, unused space, was the potential Devil May Cry of Europe. There was no neon sign yet, the paint was curling, and the bathroom and kitchen fixtures were eighty years old and collecting rust.

While Dante's idea of renovation was kicking down walls, Integra insisted that she hire a number of reliable businesses to see that the building's reincarnation was livable. Dante had scoped the place himself, checked out the surrounding services and deemed it as "perfect for my new pad".

Of course this really meant that just down the street were several pubs doubling as gentleman clubs, strip joints, and secretive brothels tucked away in little back-alley entrances. These were not for Dante's personal leisure-time but for business. Hard to believe but these places teemed with sin and vice, which were the sugary treats that demons craved.

But Dante had also chosen this place due to its proximity to a few choice places where he could lose himself; there was a nice joint up the street that served pizza and ice cream. And just a little further there was a gunstore neatly dropped between an attorney's office and an apartment complex. A cinema was just a few minutes' worth of walking away.

The second floor loft windows, once the glass and frames were replaced, had a masterful view of the cityscape. Over the rooftops, to the glorious channel glistening in the spare sunlight. The loft was roomy, airy, and served at once as Dante's personal fun studio. In his first act of shameless self-absorbed hedonism he borrowed money from Hellsing on top of the cash wittled away to refurnish the building to pass code. Vergil had to watch with irritation as his brother wasted it at once on useless things, like a fairly intricate set of drums, juke box, and surround-sound for his pleasure penthouse.

Vergil was forced to accompany his brother on various spending sprees. He walked into a music store alongside his twin who came equipped with wads of cash in his wallet, balked as he calmly strummed, examined, twirled each instrument on his finger, and then selected a brilliantly spectacular metallic red ESP brand instrument - Vergil didn't complicate it by remembering all the numbers and letters attached to the brand. With his new shiny toy, Dante beamed like a little kid, while Vergil reluctantly bore the burden of the amplifier.

Of course Vergil was responsible for buying all the mundane household items, such a fridge, two king-sized beds, food (which mysteriously disappeared one night to be replaced with beer, cream cheese, and microwaveable pizza), and furniture.

At least he had the benefit of his own room secured with a series of complicated key combinations and padlocks where he could spend his time to brood. He still could not quite how he went from wanting to kill Dante to take his power to living with him peacefully.

And so, with two bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen, and massive upstairs loft living room to entertain whatever guests Dante would doubtless have in the future, the Devil May Cry office opened as a shadow-extension of the Hellsing Organization.

* * *

Vergil noted that Dante seemed to suffuse a giddy kind of anticipation as he walked around and around his new place, as if he couldn't believe what his senses were telling him. The quiet twin lounged on a soft, cushiony sofa with a pillow under his knees while he read the book spirited from the Hellsing library. He couldn't concentrate on a single word with Dante wandering, his footsteps thumping with a disconcerting echo throughout the place.

"Yeah, yeah," he heard his brother muttering, "awesome, frickin' _awesome_."

He had firmly consolidated his irritation at his brother for quite some time. The money he had borrowed had to be paid back at _some_ point, and for Dante the fact hadn't really dawned on him that he was already in a huge amount of debt. Vergil liked to be practical until a need for non-professionalism presented itself. He himself had gone out of his way to bargain-hunt - realizing bitterly that it was his way of trying to Dante a favor when Dante didn't even recognize the gesture - and now it seemed the excitable brother was too absorbed in everything to remember that he was here to fight demons, not screw around in the lap of luxury.

"Are you done?" Vergil bit out, closing his book with a firm snap.

Dante bounced on the balls of his feet, taking punches to the air. "I need a punching bag. Do you think I should get one?"

"Dante..." Vergil swung his legs over the edge of the sofa, abandoned reading, and walked over to him. "As soon as you get one, you'll break it, whine about it, and buy a bigger, more expensive one. And--"

"Okay. Okay, I know where you're going with this. I can't believe you're worried about the money!"

"Of course I'm worried about the money!" Vergil pinched the bridge of his nose, reclaiming his calm-voice. "You fail to understand that we're not precisely out of trouble yet. Integra's henchmen watch us even now."

Dante continued bouncing like a caffeinated two-year-old, deciding it was more fun to backflip from one end of the room and back again. He stuck a perfect landing and dusted himself off, before he turned, staring at Vergil. "You just can't let it go, can you?" he laughed.

Vergil folded his arms, barricading himself from Dante.

"You've been scowling for days. Why can't you just have fun? You didn't even buy yourself anything."

"I don't want anything." Vergil looked out the window, pointedly avoiding looking at him. Maybe if he ignored him, he'd go away, he reasoned franticly. "And if you want to ask me any more stupid questions, let me remind you that I try very hard _not_ to be anything like you."

Dante opened his mouth to provide a cheerful, snappy retort, but he suddenly froze, fixing his gaze somewhere out the window. "_Someone's_ coming to the party. I don't think they're bringing the macaroni salad, either."

The Sparda twins rushed downstairs to the kitchen area, only to behold a very terrifying sight. The door was already open, spatters of blood on the front step, and the demons had come in through said door. They must have known automatically it was his place, judging from the huge gleaming "Devil May Cry II" sign attached to the building's wall. Dante smirked, snatching the sword from the wall just before he had stepped unto the landing of the stairs.

Vergil froze for one split second, observing the rather subdued mayhem - as most of the demons weren't doing much of anything except wandering around aimlessly, dragging their overlong arms like skeletal apes.

Until Dante leapt into the fray. "Hey, fellas. I think you all forgot to pick up your door prizes." He swung the sword from his shoulder into ready position. "Come and get it."

The demons swung round on the half-devil, whose coarse, brief taunts invigorated some anger; then they all leapt toward him. Vergil cursed, only invisioning the chaos that would render the newly reburbished downstairs kitchen/office area into a pile of rubble. He snatched the Yamato from by the sofa upstairs before jumping down from the stairway, negating the use of the steps, knocking the first demon to the floor, and despining it with a deft flick of the massive Yamato.

Dante seemed to share the same concern. Through the front door, he wailed on his opponents till they reeled senselessly, then booted each and every one of them out the door, taking the battle to the street. Vergil stood in the doorway after Dante had proceeded to chase his fumbling enemies while they regained their bearings. He watched his brother enjoying the fun, without any real inclination to join in. Dante deserved this opportunity to "party"; he was, effectively a laughing, insane killing thing, swinging massive sharpened demon steel into helpless demon flesh and rending it with each devestating blow.

_It really is good to be home_, he thought as a demon tried to make its escape back up the front steps to Devil May Cry II. With barely any expression, he shoved the heel of his boot into the things face and gave it a good kick back down the steps.


	12. Chapter 12

**Author's Note:** Okay, cool. What a chapter. Fun to write, fun to do. Yeah, I looked up St. Jerome - just patron saints of orphans, and that's what I came up with and I liked it. So here it is. Goodie, goodie. Hope you enjoy.

**THIS IS CHAPTER 12, COS I SAID SO.**

---

It was hard, fast, dirty work that Dante enjoyed. Integra managed the culmination of vampires, who came out of the woodwork as if the presence of other monsters seemed to ring as an unspoken challenge for supremacy. Damn it, why did one problem always bounce off another and give it more momentum? Alucard did not seem to mind. There was more fun if there was more than one vampire at a time - which was now so often the case. Clans of vampires were reported nearly every week. He came from battles covered in gore, a wide fanged smile beaming from his flushed face, having gorged like some disgusting tick upon the blood of his enemies. He feasted on their power and took it for his own and seemed to swell with pride each time.

Dante had settled in about a month ago; that was approximately two and a half-months after the dream incident. Business had been steady. He covered the cable and internet bill; Hellsing organization disguised paying the other utilities under the name of a pseudo-business.

Integra had to open a covert, seperate desk and hired a second assistant to handle any and all demon paperwork that flowed in - seemingly like a torrent - and sift through reports to find ones Dante would do. All of this was based on certain criteria that she and other members of the Round Table had migrained over. Every morning, noon, and night, she scoured the reports of the detectives who spied on Dante and Vergil Sparda at all hours. So far, they did the jobs... and nothing else. Occasionally Dante would go and get a sundae of some kind at a little cafe... and Vergil to the bookstore, or to trade stores to look at foreign goods.

She was also well aware that Iscariot had caught on about the two brother's existence. While the Vatican could not begin to guess the nature of her two secret agents, she hoped that the secret would be kept for as long as possible before the primordial goop hit the fan. She had recieved several harassing phone calls from the Iscariot's main office, demanding her to verify that she was indeed supporting the Devil May Cry business. So far she had dodged their questions by feigning ignorance, only admitting that she found the business was "troubling but served a necessary function".

With a cigar burning itself up in her fingers one late, chilly afternoon, the experienced vampire slayer gave a start as her vampire melted into her line of sight. He was dressed for killing-time in his favorite blood reds. She had long since given up trying to tell which was the actual color of the clothes and which was blood.

"Miss Lisa," he explained as he put a paper in front of her, "wants you to see this one." He crossed his arms and then lounged against the desk, covering much of the other paperwork with his rear end and coat. She sighed at him, and read the demon report. As she flitted down through each line of words, the blurred text snapped into focus.

"Children?" she whispered tremulously. "Children are disappearing, and demons seem to be the cause?"

"Is that what it says?" Alucard looked down at the paper too as if suddenly very interested. Perhaps he had already reached the same conclusion as his Master; perhaps it was because their minds were inextricably linked, but they both met each other's gaze after a second. Only Alucard spoke first.

"Anderson's going to horn in on this," Alucard mused, slowly sliding off the desk and stretching his arms out to his sides. "I can tell you he won't let any children suffer, even 'Protestant spawn'."

"He can't fight demons," Integra sneered confidently. "Perhaps even his regenerative abilities have their limitations."

"What will you have me do? This incident is within our jurisdiction but Iscariot rarely adheres to those boundaries." He was fairly adept at speaking Integra's mind. Then he threw in a bit of his own input. "Interesting!"

"What?"

"If you want to send Dante in for this, and he meets Anderson... what sort of battle with that be?" The nosferatu's eyes glazed as he tried to see the architexture of such a confrontation. He was obviously excited about pitting two interesting individuals against one another. It really was battle that the vampire lusted for, the eternal struggle, the blood, sweat, the strain, push and pull, all of those things.

"A massacre." Integra shook her head, and took off her glasses slowly, rubbing them with a special white cloth. She looked strangely juvenile without them. Alucard's smile lost some of its vibrance. "Alucard, I want you to go babysit them from a distance at St. Jerome's Orphanage. Make sure no one is hurt, especially the children." She frowned, and reformed her statement: "_Especially_ the children. But you are not to interefere unless it directly affects the children. _Stay out of sight_. Understood?"

The nosferatu had but to obey. "Yes, my Master." And in an instant, he was gone through the wall with a chestire cat smile. Doubtless that he could arrange Hellsing to transport him once Integra wired a few orders. How would Dante react to see Alucard was there to baby-sit this very-special occasion; the more, he figured maniacally, the merrier.

-------

The orphanage glowed in a halo of gold in the afternoon sun. A circular garden with a large tree swayed in a brisk breeze. Dante had walked up the driveway where the taxi had dropped him off, and stood in the shade of the massive elm. His lips pursed, he gazed at the wide spacious windows, the clean driveway, and the steps leading to enormous ancient double doors. The place smelled old; it must have been raised for the many orphans of wars past, a century or two ago. The original stonework depicted the patron saint Jerome in the stonework above the door.

Dante walked up to the front steps. He had come with his sword hidden in a guitar case. The building probably doubled as a church and community center. Once he reached to use the button to enter, the door on the right opened suddenly. A woman dressed modestly, and in her mid-thirties, emerged into the waning light.

Dante offered her a smile. She stared at his white hair and managed to greet him, "Welcome, Mister Dante."

Daintily she stepped back inside, and he followed. It was strangely silent in the entire building. And there was the definite presence of demons. The fuzz on his arms prickled; he frowned as he gazed at the stained glass windows. The figures portrayed in repose were small, child-like figures reaching up to a figure above them, whose hands also reached down. The supplication of the orphans' postures was unmistakable. Dante felt a pang in his heart, and thought about his brother who was at home... and no doubt being guarded just as well.

The wood floors creaked hollowly as the woman advanced along into a large foyer, which was clean but it looked lived-in. There were some toys, a blanket, on one sofa; a bookshelf had a few extra Holy Bibles, a crucified Jesus gazing down palely from behind a sixteen-inch television. Dante glanced peripherally at all of these things.

"Uh," he said, not uncomfortable with these holy objects at all, just the utter silence the woman was giving off. "Where are the little kids?"

The terse reply came swiftly. "The children have been placed under the care of one of our own."

"O-kay?" Dante watched the back of her as she pushed open some doors near the end of the foyer. They passed bathrooms labeled "Boys" and "Girls" respectively, very far apart.

"The East Wing is for the girls," the lady explained. "And reversely, the West is boys. Originally St. Jerome was an all-girl's orphanage and school, but since the recent chaos, we've had to accomodate for both genders."

"And how is that working out for you?" Dante asked, hearing some of the tension in her voice. Apparently demons were not the only thing testing this lady's Christian patience. He was disappointed that she did not answer.

So he laid his hands on the guns waiting to be put to good use, feeling the stagnant air thicken with the presence of demons. The woman looked noticably paler, and she crossed herself before approaching a final door near the West Dormitory where the boys would sleep at night. Apparently the boys were sheltering in the girls' dorm for now. She slid a key from her pocket and turned it in a lock, and then darted back with a scream as a long, curved blade suddenly protruded through the wood.

"You should probably stay back," he noted smugly. "If we're lucky, this'll be done in a few minutes." He kicked open the door with one solid blow from his boot and continued on inside. The sturdy doors swung shut again with a click behind him, and the woman heard Dante's voice greet,

"Ooh. Toys!"

And the corridor boomed with hellish screams and gunfire.

--------

"F-Father Anderson?" A young boy with tangled brown hair spoke up from the crowd of children looking wanely up from their fort of beds, chairs, and blankets. Anderson had helped them make it - it gave the children something to do and took their minds off of being afraid.

The roar of gunfire thumped dully against his ears. It reminded him of many encounters with a certain degenerate vampire, under the guise of 'servant' among those Protestant pigs. He put a smile on his lips and gently squeezed the young boy's hand, whose face screwed up with consternation as he listened to the gunfire.

"Don't ye worry," he told the child. "God is with ye, for he loves none more than you sweet children."

In fact, Anderson did not feel much like smiling. He had gone to St. Jerome to rescue children when he discovered that the demons here were far more monstrous than the bloodsucking filth that usually warranted his attention. His lips pursed when he heard the gunfire start and stop intermittantly. He had known for a long time about the two demonslaying twins Dante and his elusive brother Vergil. Their demon-killing exploits had won them some notoreity in the short time since their business had sprung up in London, England. It was uncanny, the way they seemed to know exactly when and where demons emerged.

Iscariot had its suspicions but they only concerned Hellsing's tight-lipped attitude about the brothers. Anderson on the other hand deeply mistrusted their supposed 'skills'. He was not impressed by their prowess as humans. In fact, he doubted they were anything less than human.

The priest finally relinquished his post. He wanted to see this Dante himself. He wanted to see exactly what kind of new pawns Hellsing had unearthed from the depths of sin.

He said a prayer as he approached the West end of the orphanage. His glasses caught each beam of golden sunlight as he passed in front of windows. The heart-pounding rush of the righteous filled his veins, and glory would be his. He would know for certain whether this Dante and his brother were do-gooder citizens with impressive skill, or monsters of a different caliber...

He threw open the doors, his robes flickering, and clenched his hands at the massacred room. Beds were overturned, boxes were smashed, belongings scattered. The remnants of the demon filth that had been plaguing the children was lying in a heap, gasping and twitching. Its body was slowly disintegrating into ash. An unfamiliar white-haired youth thrust its boot through the ribcage of the beast and gave a twist. The fierce maw of the beast fell shut at last and it transformed into sand.

The smug youth looked up, a savage sword grasped in his hands. Anderson had missed the fight, but the wreckage was enough to stir up his ire.

"Were you invited?" Dante asked. He still had not let go of the sword.

"You've destroyed everything," Anderson seethed. "Now where will the boys sleep? Filth! Ye've no respect at all for the suffering of these children!"

"If I didn't, I woudn't have bothered showing up," Dante replied quickly. "What the heck's got your habit in a bunch anyway?"

Anderson's eyes watched a trickle of blood drip from Dante's ear. The small cut, he saw, sealed up immediately. Dante wiped the blood away nonchalantly, waiting for an answer.

"You unclean filth." Bayonets filled his hands, and the man's head lifted, catching the movement Dante made with his hand toward his guns. Anderson's voice rang through the corridor as he shouted, "How dare you contaminate this lordly home with your presence! May God have mercy on your impure soul!"

Dante escaped just clear of the flying bayonets, whose blades pounded into the wood where he had just been standing a fraction of a second hence. Dante had rolled clear of the attack. His eyes gleamed with excitement; Anderson could tell that this bastard, whoever he was, was actually looking forward to more carnage.

"Some thanks I get," his opponent growled, "but I don't go out of my way beating up on men of the cloth. Get your head on straight, okay. Don't pin this mess all on me. I came here because of the demon."

"The demon's dead," he growled. "Yet only one man came. And you succeeded where many capable exorcists have failed." He threw down a bayonet point first into the floor, and distinctly murmured a prayer before he cackled. "You are just the same as them. It's true! Iscariot was right. _You are a monster just like them!"_

Dante felt a little miffed. Whenever someone with that holier-than-thou attitude found out that he was a blood relative to the most powerful of demons, it always put a damper on his mood. Being called a monster was not top on his list of annoying events. Plus, this guy looked as if it was his God-given duty to rid the world of monsters. He had heard about Iscariot through Integra only a little - nothing but bad stuff.

He watched as the priest circled around. He had scars on his face, he noticed; he had straight teeth and a madman's smile and piercing emerald eyes. Scruffy, too. He pointed his guns and followed him as he moved, matching his pace as he walked around, stepping over broken things.

"Listen--" Dante started, but Father Anderson would have none of it.

"Silence! Keep your poison tongue behind yer teeth, unless ye'd like me to cut it off!" With a roar, he lunged at the white-haired figure. The two figures immediately clashed; a speeding bayonet sliced a neat gash through Dante's forearm as he twisted to avoid it. He leapt skyward, seemed to disappear for an instant with a sound like a gust of wind and reappeared above and behind Father Anderson. He seemed to float for a second, his heel aimed for the back of the man's head. His boot connected with a solid crushing sound. Toppling forward, the priest hit the ground, splayed out on his stomach. Dante rebounded from the strike and landed on the floor, grinning ear to ear.

It had grown dark since the battle with the demon had started. Now the lights were growing dim. The lamps from the hallway clicked on, washing the room in a pale gleam.

Anderson lay on the floor perfectly still, except for his rising and falling chest. For all his worth, he had appeared like a worthy foe, but Dante quickly realized this was not the case. The self-assured teenager gave a snort, turning to go.

"Great," he said, "now I can go to jail for beating up a Catholic priest." With that statement tossed over his shoulder into the room, he reached the door's threshold.

He paused when he heard a familiar voice. _He's not finished yet._

In fact, Anderson had finished with playing possum; he had counted on Dante being so confident that he had won against a human that he waited until his back was turned... then--

Blood erupted from the exit wounds of six bayonets bursting through his chest. Dante's eyes widened with some alarm; his lips tasted at once like copper and pain momentarily filled his ears with buzzing frantic nerves. Anderson crooned sadistically as he twisted the seventh into his stomach and then grabbed him roughly by his hair, pulling him roughly from the doorway and back into the room. Dante fell face-first into the floor, a broken something jabbing him close to his groin where he fell. The bayonets felt unlike any usual stabbing objects; he realized slowly that these were blessed, and that maybe he was not quite immune to their debilitating runes.

"Not so fast," Anderson said. He placed a foot on one bayonet... and with a hard thrust sent the weapon through Dante totally, and into the floor as well with an unhealthy crunch.

"Fuck," Dante wheezed. "Anger issues much?"

Anderson merely laughed as, one by one, each with a different crunching, squishing spurt of blood, the weapons were thrust through Dante into the wooden floor. Blood was beginning to pool around him. The thick smell of it was beginning to fill Dante with a confusion of urges. He lapped his blood from the floor.

_Get up_, he heard a voice say. _Get up! You can do it. The part of you that's human - that is the part that can save you. Don't worry about what Anderson will do._

Dante knew he was not crazy. This had to be Alucard's voice - one he'd heard before and actually got accustomed to. He rarely had time and the means to secret himself over to Hellsing and talk to the nosferatu. But why was he here, and why wasn't he going to help him?

"Weep for the sinners," Anderson intoned. He walked around Dante, and leaned down to grab a fistful of his hair. "What are you, exactly, beast?"

Dante blearily grinned. He put his hands on the floor, and started to push. Severed muscle, limbs, and bones, all screamed in protest. But laying there only made him numb and irritable. He started to growl bloodily with the effort, his nose burning as blood pumped from his innards. He smacked Anderson's hand away and lurched to his feet, some bayonets still sticking in the floor; others had actually come out. Dante spat blood and closed his fingers around the first bayonet he could reach, pulling it loose.

"You're really starting to get on my nerves."

Anderson quavered once. His bayonets, tossed aside like... _like nothing_...

He ruminated for a split-second, because that was all the time he had before the devilspawn suddenly retaliated with that cruel sword. Anderson jerked back, and danced backwards, twisting and lurching away, then sprang two bayonets into each of his hands to ward off the demon. Each strike, however, was nearly double the power it looked capable of. It was wearing down on Anderson's altered stamina. It was ungodly how this freak was fighting even with a bayonet still sticking out from between his ribs.

Duck, dodge, feint. The swordplay was nothing short of daring. The two figures danced in the pale light, their movements passing as blurs to the unaccustomed eye. But only one watched the two embroiled in battle. Despite his injuries, Dante seemed just as quick on his feet. He was not underestimating the regenerator any longer - in fact, he never gave him a chance to get those blades through his limbs again. In a fit of inspiration he jumped back to give himself room, jerked the remaining bayonets free and hurling them like silver missiles at the priest as he came forward.

Anderson let loose muffled cries of pain. Blood soaked into his robe; Dante wanted to celebrate his victory, but the regenerator merely laughed as he pulled the blades from his body. The cuts were mostly hidden as they closed up.

In the momentary lapse of exchanging blows, Dante tried filling the man with bullets. Anderson flew backwards, and a set of bayonets whirled around him a tornado of steel, creating an effective barrier against the assault. Dante glared through the gunsmoke before he raced toward him in a reckless bid to break through his defenses, exchanging for the Rebellion; he felt a renewed sense of energy, a power filling him up. It was a welcome second wind. With the new strength surging through him, he swung the blade to disrupt the circling bayonets; Anderson's defense, however, remained strong and in the midst of the whirling blades, his blow ricocheted ungracefully back at him. He jerked backward, and then raced in a circle around the room as the bayonets turned on him. A rainstorm of steel chased his progress all the way up the wall, from which he kicked off and landed balanced on the edge of a bed. It toppled when he bounced off; the mattress tore as several dozen bayonets careened through it.

The slight burst of speed that the wall-jump had given him saved him from getting turned into a pincushion, yet he couldn't help that one last bayonet finding its mark - it punctured through his left calf and halted his progress. He stood still for a minute, actually panting as he looked for the regenerator; he had disappeared from his point and now could be anywhere damn it. Dante's mind raced: how many of those fucking things does he have, and where the hell does he _put_ them all?

"Give up," Anderson purred from the shadows, his boots falling heavily. "Come and relinquish your soul before God and let it be judged."

"Like Hell." Dante's leg quivered, and he felt his shoe start to fill up with blood. He reached down and pulled at the blade, and threw it down onto the floor. He saw a movement out of his peripheral and turned to face it, but the flicker of color - was it red? - had vanished.

Anderson emerged from shadows and approached the demon hunter. Dante whipped around to face him.

A blurred motion caught both men's attention: it was a matter of who reacted first. Dante turned to figure out what it was, and Anderson's was a cry of alarm. Dante tensed as he felt the creature collide into his leg and latch on with voracious need, and a voice cried, "Stop! Stop it!! Don't fight, please!"

Dante made out a head of curly dark hair. It was a boy, and his face was pointed at Anderson, his loud pleas echoing in the eerie silence.

"Child," Anderson said, his voice wavering, "Ye'd best come away from that man."

"No, stop it, you don't understand!" the kid insisted. Dante felt a rise of panic. If this kid got hurt, or something, it would all be over... he needed to get him away and probably high-tail it out of here himself.

"Kid, you really shouldn't be getting in the middle of this kind of stuff." Dante dropped his hand carefully, and Anderson devoured the movement with his eyes. Dante was aware of every inch of the man quivering with self-restraint. "Let go. Go back to the other kids."

"No!" The boy clutched tighter, and his defiant stare turned on Dante. "Please don't fight anymore!"

He looks familiar...

...and then by the time Dante realized who it was, and by the time Anderson made his move, his panic doubled; he threw the boy toward what he prayed was a fairly safe mattress and ground his heel against the floor as Anderson tackled into him, the man's shoulder compressing his chest into a pancake while he reeled backward. Anderson's arms latched around his waist and his eyes looked absolutely crazed. A lion-like roar erupted from his lips as he pounded Dante's face once for good measure when he crashed into the floor.

He procured something that looked like a giant nail; by the time Dante recognized it for what it was - simply another excuse to say 'oh fuck me' from pain - the priest had already thrust it directly through Dante's right eye, and most of his vision was obliterated.

_The boy from the dreamscape had lived_, his mind drummed repeatedly. _He had lived He had survived, and he was an orphan and he knows who I am._

The boy started screaming, no longer capable of maintaining coherency as he saw Dante's eye punctured out with the sleek stake Father Anderson had thrust through the socket. He could not communicate who Dante was, or what good deeds he had performed during that horrible time.

"Don't ever," Anderson snarled while Dante fought off his temporary blindness, "lay your filthy hands on a child."

It was at that moment, when Anderson sat on him and snarl prayers against him, that he decided Integra _seriously_ owed him. Big-time.


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N: **Wow, this is a bit late. Not that anyone's keeping track. I hope not! I'm not a very dependable writer, am I? Hmm. Ah, well. Here is another chapter, painfully written as I move my brain in a forward-like motion (writing-wise, anyway).

**Chapter 13 - The Priest and the Demon**

Dante Sparda was coated completely in blood. His face had gone red, and even his tousled white hair had gone a shade toward pink. The nail had gone directly into his eye, and his brain was now staggeringly active. As if his nerves were somehow confused as to what was going on, odd little twitches, macabre spasms of a body no longer bending to its master's will. These little things seemed to bring the imagination to a grinding halt, staggered by the sheer cosmic impossibility that even while these terrible things were happening, the man inside this mangled shell of a body still lived. His soul clung on, unnaturally aware of every stabbing twinge of pain, every orchestrated effort to breathe and overcome the pain, the horror of it...

The slippery floor softened Alucard's careful stalk. The boy's shrill animal screams had gone down to sobs. Every little noise shook the boy's tiny little frame, made even smaller by the shadows of the man straddling the devil hunter's prone body. Alucard remained unnoticed for as long as possible; his long shadow never quite fell where the others would notice. The light from the hall only reflected off the brilliant orange sunglasses for a second as he moved forward, one step at a time...

"Think you can usurp the will of the Lord?" growled the priest, a broad, white-toothed smile splitting his face almost completely in half. Then the child's sobs were cut by Father Alexander's prayer in Latin against devils and their ilk, his tongue forming the words well-recited throughout his long life.

Alexander was thrilled to weeping, to finally send this monster's filthy soul back to Hell where it could rot forever with his brethren. He reached into his robes, where it seemed he was capable of holding numberless items, and pulled out a long, slender cross with a lethal point carved at the long end. It was a dagger by all definition. Its tip glinted in the rising moon's light and that alone was the hint from the universe that something was cruelly amiss in Alex's plans.

He saw, for the briefest instant, the face of an older enemy. He spun around to regain his feet, the dagger whistling toward its imagined mark, but a bullet and a gunshot louder than any of Dante's could hope for blasted through the dagger's progress. The dagger split apart into a few jagged pieces, careening wild, but harmlessly, away from doing anyone damage.

Leaving the prone figure of Dante to deal with everything himself, the irate priest gave an undiluted snarl of hatred. "You filthy bastard," he seethed through clenched teeth.

"Down, Father," came the inevitable purr, as Alucard refrained from showing himself to the traumatized child just yet. The many dozens of red eyes giving the darkness a personality of hungry attentiveness might have been enough already. Alucard's presence gave the light in the room a personified malevolence the likes of which only few may witness and yet live. The unspoken multitude of souls pulsed like a collective heartbeat, crowding in, clawing to fill an emptiness that was as boundless as the sea.

Somehow, Alexander made his most intelligent decision: to stay perfectly still, feeling that Alucard was not going to do anything if he merely stayed where he was.

The boy's eyes witnessed the change in the room with a kind of blank apathy, beyond the point of caring, of full comprehension. He stood up and stumbled a little over a broken toy box, the contents spilling out in a shockingly mundane display. A doll made a pathetic electronic noise that might have once been speech. The child flinched as if it were the cry of the dying. Still, he locked his heavy eyes on the vampire.

"Is it you?" he asked the darkness. "Really you? From my dream?"

"I knew I recognized your pitiful mewls from somewhere," Alucard replied, trying to mask the surge of fondness. "I wonder what prompted Fate to put you in my path again."

Anderson couldn't begin to guess where this conversation had come from. He was still livid, blood seeping into the holy garb he had donned today. But, should he manage to escape with his mind and body intact, he had his testimony that Hellsing really was involved in the devilish affairs of the Sparda brothers. He watched as Alucard entered his line of sight and stepped over to the boy. A gripping horror and hatred rose within him, just beneath the cooled surface, raging and beating against his willpower. Get away from him, he roared inwardly, his lower lip caught so firmly between his teeth that he could feel warmth trickle down his chin, catching on the fuzz growing there.

But the nosferatu did nothing untoward. He merely placed his hand on the top of his head and tousled his hair, much like a father to a child. What made it even more inane was the way the shadows with eyes crept along the floor and tied the shoelaces of the boy properly.

With an abrubt 'snap', the shadows lurched backward like a tidal wave. The air that had grown cold with Alucard's presence suddenly was steadily climbing into a warmer temperature. Alucard felt it. He automatically (and seemingly unbenownst to him) placed himself between the youngster and the body of Dante laying on the floor. He pinned his guns and eyes on the figure; he did not even have to ask to understand that there was something unsafe brewing in the blood of the half-devil, a compilation of a human's on-going struggle and the constant hunger for the power demons crave.

The blood-spattered hand lifted from the floor and fingers closed firmly around the spike firmly lodged within a seeping crimson socket. The spike came fully loose with an energetic expulsion of gore; it seeped back into his hair. The weapon clattered and rolled toward Father Alexander, who didn't so much as give it a second glance.

The gaping maw seemed to fill up with crimson and solidify into a gleaming fresh blue eye. Skin and tendons all replaced but with a markedly slower progress than typical injuries. He gave a low growl as he rolled to his feet, pressing his hand to that side of his face and ignorant to the pulsing red umbra flaring and writhing around him.

"Dear God," Anderson prayed, but a slow eagerness had come over him slowly. He had seemingly forgotten about Alucard entirely; reversely, Alucard watched the half-demon with painstaking attention, his body rigid and his on-looking legion pressed to keep quiet.

The building of erratic power seemed to reach a pinnacle as Dante stepped forward. The umbra cracked like a whip of electricity, describing a perfectly circular ripple effect across the floor, lifting up the nosferatu's coat tails while the steady hum of energy roared with boundless promise for destruction. The man became devoured by a larger silhouette, a demonic figure with jagged horns curving from a scarred, scaly brow above eyes that may have been infused with the distilled murder of a thousand killers. The monstrosity seemed to fill the room with an elongated shadow mantled with enormous, membranous wings.

It set its feet into the cracking planks of wood and looked directly at Father Anderson, washing him in an acid look so thick with syrupy despise it made the priest tremble as though he had been dipped in a bath of ice water. He had but to take one long step to get his enormous taloned hand around his body and squeeze, and off would the priest's head go, spraying the walls and ceiling with unhealthy volumes of blood. A wall of entities seemed to crash over themselves like a wave as they scrambled forward to block the demon's path.

Then a figure in red swooped at the demon; gunfire peppered the demon Dante's front left side and made almost no mark. With stark blinding speed the winged thing retaliated with a sudden thrust of its left hand, catching the crude struggling nosferatu by his arm. His eyes grew wide, then a wicked smile pulled a laugh from him. He released his art restrictions by instinct, due to imminent harm to his own body that may hamper his ability to successfully complete his Master's objective - protect the orphans. He had failed part of that objective (remain unseen), but it was too late now. It was beyond his ability to interefere unseen.

The creatures closed in on the two figures like a storm of movement, sinking in claws just to weigh him down; Dante howled with fury, the bloodlust beating in his temples rising a notch as he was weighed down and held back. He threw off as many as he could. He could no longer see Anderson past the squirming wriggling things obscuring his sight. He threw himself to the floor to smash the ones on one side, only to have even more swarm back to cover for their squished comrades. He rolled across broken bits of the floor and bedding, subsequently losing track of where he had last seen Alucard as well.

Dante was beyond any hope of forming any thought that did not involve absolutely tearing this place to pieces. He knew somewhere it was wrong to be thinking this way, that he was just like the demons he had sworn to exterminate. But in this wild, red-tinged frame of mind, everything was his enemy, everything was in his way from finally being free of his estranged past and a brother who may still turn out to be no good. He gave a shrieking howl and directed his mental energies to calming down.

However, a second shot from Alucard's gun was well-aimed. There was a dull pressure which knocked his head vaguely to the left, and a clatter of something hard falling to the floor; one of his horns had been shot clean off and it had given him enough of a shock as it was. Then he felt something grab him by the other one and twist his head back painfully at left-ward angle. The demon shuddered as redirected his sword backward toward the bastard nosferatu, infuriation at his decorative stabbing horns being thus maimed.

The next stage of that thought process included getting the hell out of the orphanage and away from the kids before he accidently brought the place crashing down on top of them. He fixed the image of that one boy's face in his head, that human ambiguity of terror and joy, worry and suspicion, trying to ignore the feeling of being unbalanced minus one bony protrusion from his skull. The flames of the Devil Trigger were suffocated by this image of helpless raw humanity; somewhere halfway out the window as he was running through the trees, he fell to a dead stop and swung around to see if Alucard was behind him.

The nosferatu had followed him and slammed into him, wrapping his abnormally long fingers around the last, not-so-ornamental horn, and gave it a sharp twist. Dante's neck twisted painfully and he roared with pain. A second hand gripped him by the throat, and precariously balancing on his chest, the vampire twisted the sharp horn until there was a horrific cracking sound. Dante's demonified eyes widened with shocking pain, only able to reach up and slash massive claws at the other's face, tearing off skin and tissues. The grip on his horn thankfully relinquished, but his skull was aching down to the base of his neck. The discomfort only fanned his rage.

"That's it. Show me your power," Alucard taunted, eyes widening with a kind of permenant insanity. As if he could not help but devour everything he saw, he stared at the demon Dante intently. "Go on, show me what Hell's power is!" He flexed his fingertips, moving his hands to the guns he held, a purely masochistic gleam in his eyes as if he could not help but allow Dante to shred him apart if he could earn it.

Dante discovered his voice, lumbering closer, licking his charred lips. "Don't be so sure." His progress hitched and he stopped, and waves of energy fell from him like robes, demonic energy sinking into the ground like supernatural blood when it fell from him. Defying all preconceptions of logic and physics, he moved so hard and fast that some of the grassy turf was shredded by the sudden movement, and his fist's pummeling trajectory was aimed at the nosferatu's midsection.

However, the expected connection of demon flesh on flesh never came. Instead he flew forward with his intended momentum and whirled to see where his enemy had vanished, ghostly, from his sight. The next moment was a blur of pain as Alucard seized both of his shoulders from behind and then clung on with talons bursting from his fingertips like extensions of diamond hard bone. They curved into his flesh and hooked in tightly.

Dante twisted his body but it seemed the vampire had hugged himself so close to his back that he couldn't reach to pull him, and his last resort was to fall on his back and effectively crush him - but crushing a vampire did not really dislodge much.

His thought processes then ground to a halt. A new sensation burned from his neck to his spinal cord, and he froze in a moment of blunt shock. The nosferatu had sunk his fangs into his neck, breaking all boundaries of friendship, of right and wrong, of... of comaraderie.

Paralyzed by the sensation of blood and soul being slowly sapped away, the half-demon fell to his knees.

* * *

_"What are you orders, my Master?" Alucard gave an excited little smile, his eyes bulging fanatically as he gazed at Integra._

_Her eyes narrowed, and her head tilted down to examine the paper and to listen to the report streaming through the radio on her desktop computer. _

_Something horribly wrong had happened. Anderson had come, just as she had feared, to the orphanage of children whose souls were being damned eternally by demons._

_"Go there immediately. Don't let a second hinder you! Stop them from killing each other and destroying everything. Above all else, see that the children stay safe!" Her hand slammed down on the desk and her voice became raw with anger. "And if you see Anderson, you are not allowed to engage with him unless you are provoked! If you are, make the battle short and flee if you must."_

_Alucard's eyes pulsed with an eager, hungry light, as if nothing would sate his undeniable hunger for pleasure and pain._

_"Yes, my Master!" In the following second, he had opened the window - the quickest way out of the building - and taken to the sky, a blazing black spot that blocked the stars._

* * *

Hungry, noisome growls bubbled from between the nosferatu's lips as he drank, hungrily, from the decidedly spicy flavor of a half-demon. His arms tightened possessively about his victim, who had grown rigid with alarm, and had not unbunched his muscles since. His aching body rejoiced - a real feast, a real challenge! - and his black little soul sang. More and more, with each sweet, hot mouthful, he felt himself lose the will to release the white-haired one, whose limbs now had the form of a man, whose demonic energy was dwindling with the taking of his blood.

What was it that made this particular brand of feast so delicious? Why couldn't he remember the last time he ever tasted someone so good? His eyes slid shut and he moaned around the bite wound.

Dante uttered a curse of loathing, sluggishly reaching for a pistol. But abrubtly, Alucard let go and twisted his head at a nearly one-hundred-and-eighty degree angle to stare at the distraction that had disturbed him from Dante's throat.

The young lad, the tousle-haired mouse, had just thrown a rock, and it had bounced off of Alucard's head and tumbled to one side. The boy clung to the trunk of a tree, trying to stay hidden. His fear was palpable, but more so was his determination, from the way his small feet were set in the ground to the way his chest moved as he breathed in deeply. His body was a small rigid bundle of nerves, tissue and bone. It was an unwavering tower of will that crippled Alucard's bloodthirst like an iron one-ton wrecking ball to a stack of cards.

"You... can't," the boy said harshly, and Alucard recoiled from Dante and collected himself in the moonlight, gazing forlornly at the ground. Thudding agony rippled through his body.

He heard the Hellsing vehicle arrive long before it even pulled into the back garden through the trees. Dante was still on hands and knees, panting and staving off unconsciousness. His skin was nearly as white as his tangled, messy hair.

* * *

After being unceremoniously collected like errant baggage and dumped into the back of the large black Hellsing van, Dante had tried to catch rest. But he kept being jostled, and his self-disgust was multiplied by the fact that he was tortured by a migraine and the boy's long ambiguous stare. He couldn't begin to find the energy to peer around and ask where the hell that prick, Bats, was. In fact, where did Alucard get the brass balls to think he could suck on his neck like the veritable damned public fountain?

His eyes closed again, and when he opened them he was ordered to go directly to Devil May Cry and wait to be called the next morning.

When Dante barreled in through the front door, Vergil was half-awake on the sofa downstairs with a book cracked open and laying on his chest. He was aroused from sleep once he thought the floor was being ripped up by rhinos. It was only Dante, heavily walking toward the bathroom near the back, in the short hallway down the stairs. He was stripping off his jacket long before he reached the bathroom door, and blood had begun to cake underneath his coat, along his neck, and from the top of his head. His haggard face was veiled in a morose, pissy shadow. Vergil sat up, a hard cold blade sinking in through his stomach.

"Dante, what's wrong with you?" The darker brother's brows knitted, irritation and human emotion skittering across his heart like distracting insects.

"Rough day at work."

The bathroom door shut with a slam, followed by the squeak and shuddering of shower plumbing as the water gushed out in one continuous, plaintive blast of heat.


End file.
